Even if you haven’t heard of the cultural shift known variously as Extended Adolescence, Kidulthood or, infamously, “Boys who shave“, you know about it. Maybe you’re a twenty-something woman like Julie Klausner who’s frustrated with the lack of quality, mature, available men (her hilarious book, I Don’t Care About Your Band, is a great read).
Maybe you’re a parent of a twenty-something guy who dropped out of college, moved back home and isn’t doing… anything. No plans. No girlfriend. No ambition.
Or maybe you’re one of those guys. You work a part-time job, have no plans for the future, and are content to hang out with your buddies, surf the interwebs and play Call of Duty. (If that’s you, you need to read Chris Hardwick’s awesome book The Nerdist Way: How to Reach the Next Level (In Real Life).)
I’ve written elsewhere that some amount of Extended Adolescence may be unavoidable as our lifespans lengthen. But even if that’s true, the male twenty-somethings of our culture are largely in dire straights.
Extended Adolescence (EA) isn’t going away anytime soon. Everyone’s talking about it and no one has any ideas about what to do.
Enter Dr. Leonard Sax. Sax is a psychiatrist with over 20 years of therapy experience under his belt. He comes to the table armed with insight, grace, humor, eloquence and an entire army of the latest psychological research.
Sax identifies – as the book’s subtitle indicates – “five factors driving the growing epidemic of unmotivated boys and underachieving young men.” Drawing both on research and his personal experience as a therapist, Sax also outlines strategies parents and friends can employ to combat EA.
1. Changes at School
Simply, the problem is that today’s kindergarten curriculum is the first grade curriculum of our parents’ generations. Today’s kindergartens are wildly inappropriate for the developmental state of most 5-6 year old boys.
So they hate kindergarten and their teachers, which typically translates into a general distain for school/education in general.
Sax recommends holding boys back a year and finding all-boy classrooms if at all possible. All-boy classrooms are – according to the data – astonishingly effective at both primary and secondary levels. Sax has some great tips for how to bring this to the attention of your PTA/PTOs, to begin implementing all-male classroom options at local public schools.
2. Video Games
Most boys are highly motivated. Even those who appear apathetic almost always want to be in charge of their environments. In addition to all the other possible drawbacks to video games, this means boys are particularly susceptible to a particularly insidious kind of video game addiction.
Our brains are wired to release a chemical cocktail that rewards us for achieving and accomplishing. Most modern video games are heavily achievement-based, which means they cause our brains to release the same chemical cocktail as when we achieve real-world success (this is something Chris Hardwick also deals with in The Nerdist Way).
This means that video game achievements can easily replace real-world accomplishment as our source of self-confidence.
Sax recommends – unsurprisingly – carefully monitoring both the kinds of games your boys play and how long they play them. He also has some great tips for how to break video game addictions that may already have formed.
8 replies on “Book: Boys Adrift by Leonard Sax (Part I)”
Interesting book on a underdeveloped topic. I’m suspicious of his first claim, or rather, the solution to his first claim. But, I haven’t seen the data or the studies from which the data was obtained (let alone looked at his interpretation of the data), so it is a timid suspicion.
I absolutely love the second point. What I’m not as sure about is how gender-specific it is. I see it all the time in my students across gender. Implementing achievement-based learning modeled after Xbox-style achievements and/or World of Warcraft type leveling is something that is being experimented with in some of the educational circles I keep an ear to. If I was full time, I’d redesign one of my classes based upon such a design. For an early take on this, see The Multiplayer Classroom: Designing Coursework as a Game.
I think that if we retool our educational and vocational systems to include the achievement/leveling model (without ejecting the others) we’d be better off.
One other point to make on his second point, I’d highlight that while video games include virtual worlds, playing video games occurs in the real world. The achievements live on in the real world. I see it not as a habit to break, but a drive to redirect.
This is something I pointed out to a series of older professors at our last faculty development conference. They were lamenting the lack of propensity for deep research and chalked it up to a general degradation of society. I tried to redirect the conversation to leveraging the positive aspects of the cultural shifts and then to build into the students that of which they were lamenting the loss.Interesting enough, I’m reading a book on a similar vein, the creation of modern manhood from a sociological/cultural/marketing/economic perspective, The Hearts of Men, American Dreams and the Flight from Commitment by Ehrenreich (who might have a German family background). I’m not very far into it, but what is astounding is how much modern American “manhood” is a distinct product of marketing and market forces.
Look forward to the second part of your review, JR.
The second point is interesting to me. I think of my brother who is kinda stuck in this stage. And he plays lots of video games. He has always had a hard time with school (due to some speech issues early in life), but once he discovered video games, he got lost in them. He’s really good at them, and I think it is a way of escape and achieving in a world where he feels like he doesn’t fit. I’ve seen him use another coping mechanism in the same way recently that again mirrors this “achievement”.
I don’t know about the first one. I tend to think that kindergarten is too easy as it is right now. I can’t imagine it being “too hard”. I’d be curious as to what things he thinks is developmentally inappropriate for boys to be doing at age 5 and 6. Does he go into that at all?
He spends TONS of time on that. In short, he basically claims that today kindergarten is all about teaching reading and writing rather than experiential knowledge.
I’ll be interested in your take on the book.
“Sax recommends holding boys back a year and finding all-boy classrooms if at all possible. All-boy classrooms are – according to the data – astonishingly effective at both primary and secondary levels.”
I haven’t read the book and it doesn’t sound like I will based on what this guy is saying. He is way way way off. It is crazy to suggest that boys are adrift, recognize broken education as a problem then recommend keeping the same system as a solution. Children learn by being free, letting their minds and bodies explore new frontiers, they learn and grow by playing and testing boundaries of their environment. A school is in every sense like a prison for children. It limits virtually all the learning opportunities a child could have anywhere else.
And about the video game claim. This is clearly an opinion; I would like to see it backed by some empirical data. There are studies after studies showing that video games promote learning, encourage a child’s mind to grow and help them think in new ways. One of my daughters just asked me a couple of weeks ago to teach her programming because she wants to start designing computer games. The other one is showing interest in games as well, but because of the “hands off” education approach we’ve taken, we are more or less letting them pursue what they love. Eventually they will learn most or all there is to know about it, and move on to the next frontier to explore in life.I think in some ways it’s a bit unfair to differentiate this early between boys and girls and claim that some of these factors are not gender neutral. It seems to me like it just feeds into a misogynistic mindset, but I could be wrong.There is a simple solution to all this: set children free from the shackles of the modern education paradigm, so they can learn what they want, when they want it, how they want it. I don’t even know what grades my kids are in, and between Jamie and I, we’ve made sacrifices to make sure they get the best life experiences (as opposed to “education”) they can get. When they ask me about stars, I know they are willing to listen and learn about hydrogen fusion…and when they ask questions about fire, I have a chance to tell them how a car engine works. It is a beautiful experience to watch your kids be free and grow unencumbered.
I think you’d really love the book, Virgil.
Sax doesn’t advocate the current education system. He’s all about massive reform in educational approaches, and he has tons of studies to back up his claims! Your comments about the contemporary educational system are right in line with his critiques in the book.
As for the video gaming comment, again, this is a whole chapter in the book, so don’t judge him by my short summary. He’s not anti-video games by any means. He praises their educational value and gives examples from his own personal and professional life.
BUT not all video games are created equal, and he has a lot of great empirical data to caution parents of boys. He never says to ban video games, only to be very careful what kinds of games boys play.
For what it’s worth, his cautions are also all developmental. He doesn’t seem to care what kinds of games adults play. His main concern is setting up adolescent boys for as much real-world success as possible.
The second point is interesting. I question the first, however. It is my understanding, from a fair bit of reading about the history of US education, that a significant share of boys have hated school since …well, since it became school. I’m sure some current policies don’t help the situation, but it’s not a new phenomenon.
Of course, there will always be holes in education of any kind. It’s unavoidable-because education, philosophy, and society are fluid, and will always be changing. I do strongly disagree with our country’s way of thinking that advancing curriculum, (as he mentioned) and starting children earlier, will bring about a better education and well rounded individuals. It’s not all about learning the three R’s. It’s about teaching children HOW to live, how to think, how to love.
And on the video games, he’s got some good points. D’s rents got our Bean a DSI. Our rule is that he only gets it on the weekends, if he’s had good behaviour throughout the week. All his friends can play any day of the week. We don’t allow many movies that are too sexual or too violent…..yet his friends get to see much more than he does. (Keep in mind…he’s only 7.) Though he gets so angry, and feels like we are not fair to him….I have many heart-to-hearts with him. I’m always reminding him we care about ALL of him, nurturing, loving, and teaching him. I’ve explained to him that includes his heart.
There are many moments I’m the evil Momma who is so unfair…maybe one day he’ll thank us….I hope so!