How to Solve the Education Crisis for Boys and Men | Richard Reeves | TED

The very best❤

No one has their back. They are going to find that out very quickly.

What about gender pay gap?

This is true but why didn’t this happen in the past? Lack of male teachers is a huge problem

How does he incorporate that to be a viable partner a man has to outperform a woman on average. I'm not talking about the exceptions, so don't bother me with my wife earns more and it works. I'm talking about the rule. This is sadly a zero sum game. It wouldn't be the case, to give a ridiculous example if female lawyers would fight to date the elementary school teacher. Otherwise other than grandstanding this speech is not helpful. Man work for status and status gives them more options, if you can't have status you could give men all the free education you want to become an English teacher, they won't take it. Again, on average, please spare me from anecdotal evidence.

i was an unwanted child and my parents made me feel that every day. I had to "excel" in school by being given nothing I needed to achieve that. They did the bare minimum so social services doesn't come knocking. The moment my mom discovered ADHD they finally could treat me as the disgrace they always wanted to see and from that point on they had every excuse to treat me as even less than a human. I only had a right to exist when i was medicated out of my mind.

I think the first time i fantasized about suicide i was about 9 years old, and tried to symbolically do it with the cords of my backpack, luckily they fostered hopeless inaction enough so that would never happen. I somehow managed to stay positive enough until my A Level. the struggles at home and in school were too much and i just let failing school happen. the day after my parents threw me out of the house. Half a year in a psych ward did some good, but not enough for the studies. The teachers at my new school were the first role models of my life and getting my A level was kinda a breeze. But I was just too broken for the studies. another couple of stays at a ward and 5 years wandering around the country to unsuccessfully find a place of belonging i realized i had to create my own life. tailored to the way i am or think i can be. Doesn't mean i had a life, it just meant that the best outcome would be finally having one. so i took one of the few opportunites i could take and started delivering food and game dev.

Luckily in software development you can learn on your own with just a pc and as a gaming junkie that was convenient enough. I had to use passion because discipline was buried after nearly 20 years of mismanagement. I'm now 36 years old, made the jump to actually earning a living 2 years ago, still have 25k € of debt and just got kicked from the job for just not having what it takes and i had to realize how many of the dysfunctionalities i still carry with me. Thankfully i could experience what a middle class life would look and feel like and take all the feedback and feeling to propel me furthre into the middle class mentality. only 1 year to go and i can be rid of all my debt and finally start on having a life.

to be honest, that will probably be a whole nother challenge of its own. But i started this journey when i was around 25 because I knew: either i start now or i finish this misery right away. luckily i was too much a coward to do the latter

Nothing will be done. Look at how Cassie Jaye was received. Men and boys are on their own for decades to come.

Really makes you wonder if women care about their sons. Why didn't they stop Feminism earlier?

Richard Reeves' angle on this increases the divide between genders rather than lessens it. The solution is teaching everyone emotional intelligence at a young age. Gender itself is what's toxic. Gender teaches people to be half a person. It used to be that feminine people were taught emotional intelligence and held back from mechanical intelligence and vice versa for masculine people, but then we worked to stop holding back feminine people so much and now masculine people are still left without the emotional intelligence (which also helps further mechanical intelligence as well).

His take on the impulse control is biological essentialism and ignores a lot of psychology. We (typically) raise boys to not have as much impulse control as we raise girls to have. That should be extremely obvious to anyone who begins to look into this topic in the slightest.

Richard Reeves has no good solutions to propose. He goes on and on whining about people not paying attention to a thing so that people keep paying him to talk about it out of a sense of moral obligation. But he does no good by talking about it, he only furthers the divide.

I don't buy the brain development argument. I don't deny the science. But we had these things called parents. I know many boys I went to class with didn't enjoy doing homeworks, but they still managed to do them. Not doing homework wasn't really an option.

I also think it's very important to have purpose and goals. As I said over 15 years ago, it's important for feminists to have a positive message for boys. Or there will be trouble. It's difficult to prosper in a hostile environment. And men need purpose and goals. What is the purpose of men in a feminist society? I accepted my role as provider by the time I was 9 and by 12, I had a career in mind and I stuck to it. I worked even on subjects I didn't enjoy to get best grades to have best chance at getting into the best school and best university. I can't overstate how important it is. Otherwise, men being naturally lazy, they just won't try. Men don't go into making a lot of money for themselves. You don't need that much money to have fun and enjoy life. You need a lot of money if you want a family. But women are taking care of that, right? (That's not my thinking, that's the lack of purpose since providing is not it anymore.)

I do agree on teachers. But I see a different problem. In my experience, most of female teachers really struggle to command a room and to control boys. They lack respect. In fact, sometimes they were downright laughing stock. Not so with males. But there was also a problem. I witnessed old generation being replaced by new generation with the new male teachers coming in wanting to be your friends and it just didn't work. A kind of woman in pants. At graduation, everybody remembered most fondly the grumpy old physics teacher that nearly everybody hated in class because he was demanding and had knack for sniffing out weaknesses and grilling you on them. But he forced us to push and learn something and that's what everybody appreciated in hindsight.

I thought gender is a social construct. Why are we sill pitting men against women?!

I have utilized the square peg in a round hole metaphor in the way corp world works. Where we only value xyz ( round hole) and discount what the employee is offering outside it (their corners that need to be shaved off to fit) then chastise them for not fully filling the hole entirely.

Where is girls and womens?

Amazing work. Thanks for bringing up a topic that has been constantly ignored.

The best talk I’ve heard on this subject because it’s the only one that acknowledges the role of economic inequality in what’s happening. Too many of these of these talks just seem to say “It’s lack of dads, lack of male teachers and one gender’s being allowed to excel at the expense of the other”. As for the lack of male teachers - you better do something about the poor pay in heavily feminised labour sectors like teaching first to attract them.

This advancement of girls over boys ends with academia. In corporate workplace, women are still way behind especially as we move up the ladder. Moreover, in developing countries, girls still fall behind boys in schools because of very high dropouts rates among girls. Hence, the focus on girl child education still needs to continue.

I fail to see the racial part (poor whites in America are treated just as bad or worse than poor blacks because at least poor blacks are seen as unfortunates by some of the more elite institutions in our society-poor whites just seem to not be seen at all by a vast swathe of the people in power who can do something about this) of this but there are some very good points made here that are backed up by data. I was a good student in elementary, but in middle and high school I struggled far more because they failed to make it exciting enough to put away other distractions, music became an escape rather than a healthy passion. Boys need school out in nature TBH. I don't think sitting in a classroom is really that conducive to teaching a bunch of up-jumped, hormonal teenage boys to be future leaders. The way it's currently designed benefits females far more than males, and its an argument IMO to separate schools by gender again. And the lack of male teachers is a big one as well, especially in High School- I found it interesting how I subconsciously took my female teachers less seriously as my hormones were firing out of whack during that time.

I always enjoyed English with a male teacher. I never liked any of my female English teachers. I find that more profound after listening to this.

I agree that there is a problem here, but his “solutions” are totally nonsensical

110k views in a year should tell you how much the world cares about boys and men. 😂

I recently read a book by Mr. Richard V. Reeves and I think it is excellent. A very wise man who clearly points out the existing problems and inequalities. I hope that societies and governments will one day take these issues to their hearts and one day there will be true gender equality.

Given Richard Reeves solely focuses on cis het boys and men in his work (does he think queen men lack masculinity and have no seat at this discussion?) a lot of what he proposes for boys's education would have been a nightmare for me. I would NOT have wanted an extra year. How does he account for all the queer children who will be just up in the air here? I struggle with this Crisis of Masculinity discussion because it never even begins to ask if there's something cis-het men can learn from their queer brothers? There is also no discussion of what kind of schooling would be appropriate for a queer child. I am reading Reeves's book because he seems like a decent guy and I want to be part of a solution for a healthier vision of masculinity. But I am tired of my masculinity being seen as less important ... or even irrelevant to this conversation. Do better. You're leaving a lot of people out who have very traumatized relationships with their masculinity.

MEN CAN YOU PLEASE TEACH YOUR BOYS AND RAISE THEM. THEY NEED YOU. why allow them to suffer more than they already do.

I thought I was going mad, I'm really happy it's being addressed. When it will be implemented I don't know but finally awareness is coming to light.

The pressure on man is tremendous 😢

Why did that one man get to ask a question but nobody else did? Why don't all Ted talks open the audience to questions?

Education has been feminised, the way topics are approached, getting boys to write about their feelings ans wonder why they are disengaged. The overly PC culture is not boy friendly is actually discourages boys from being boys, being compeditive is discouraged rather than challenged.

i'm very impressed and pleased with the fact how well people take this in the comments

Maybe if more people would've listened to him Trump wouldn't have won.

This is really interesting and informative. Unfortunately, sending boys to school a year later will only work for affluent families. Poor families can't afford the extra childcare. They don't have Au Pairs to help out.

I just love how well he puts this. So constructive. I did a research in my country (South Africa) and boys and men are indeed falling behind. But as I was about to put the conversation out there, I could not help the urge to be bittter about it and it did not go well in my curcle. I put it on hold and I am currently preparing a constructive way and more research to start the conversation out there on a larger scale in a way that would be constructive and effective.

Respectfully sir, your analysis is grossly invalid

He’s wants DEI for men.

Interesting. I wonder if women have replaced men, or even equalled men, in CEO positions, in high earning sports roles, or in the highest seats of politics.

too many baccalas! 🤣

So how you supposed to get male teachers

Thanks ❤

Thank you so much for this.

nice

Society failed men so hard.

Love this so much. My heart hurts for boys stuck in a broken system that tells them THEY are the problem.

I gave his book to my daughter who has two boys, I hope it helps them!

Male former classroom teacher here. When you're a male teacher, you are constantly being watched (and not in an admiring manner) by your female supervisors, colleagues, and also female students--who tend to flock together and are misled into believing that every adult male out there is a predator. So unless you are Mr. Popular on Day One, you as a male teacher will be horribly scrutinized, labeled, questioned, and mistrusted without you doing anything whatsoever to provoke such suspicion. Some women in education actually don't like men (or boys for that matter). Even if they don't say it out loud, they will show it in different obvious ways. Plus, some male teachers are often hired for the utter sake of faculty diversity and to handle all the badly-behaved kids. It's a s*itty deal for males in education.

A lot of the comments on the videos about Reeves:

Reeves: "I want to help solve the issues affecting boys and men without undermining women and girls and still taking a stance that's pro feminism."
Comments: "OMG, what a misogynist whiner STFU!!!!!"

I call BULLSHIT on delaying boys from starting kindergarten later. It's the wrong solution for addressing this problem. My son started 4YK at 4 years and two months old. He's the youngest in his class and the smartest in his class. He does have high functioning autism and he would have lost a year of autism support. Delaying boys starting kindergarten is pushing kids down. He contradict what he is saying. He is creating future Trump supporters.

Instead, we need a stronger pre K through 12 grade education system. Help kids regardless of age and gender get the help they need to survive and thrive in the education system and in life. Start boys the same as girls for kindergarten. It worked in the past and it can work again. He needs to stop pushing his dangerous ideology of delaying boys from starting kindergarten.