The Urgent Fight for Our Boys' Brains
from the introduction to Swagger [Copyright 2012], by Lisa Bloom
- Many American schools are subpar
- Kids graduate without knowing the basics of U.S. history or the rudiments of science.
- The school week down to only four days to save money in over 100 U.S. counties
- Only one in three Baltimore kids graduates from high school
- One in five American high school seniors graduates illiterate
- Boys underperform compared to girls in every grade and subject
- Nationwide the majority of our African American and Hispanic boys drop out of high school
- The young adult male jobless rate hovers at 18 percent
- One hundred million Americans are now poor or near poor
- Traditionally "male" jobs? They are mostly gone, and they are not coming back
- Millions of American manufacturing jobs were siphoned off to China, India, and elsewhere. Those jobs are now extinct in America
- Popular culture—the third soul-leeching, invisible force—seduces our boys with flashy, loud messages that manhood equals macho bravado, emotional numbness, ignorance, and thugdom
- Our prison population has skyrocketed to its highest level in US history, more than any other country on earth now or in human history
- In the United States, one man out of eighteen is incarcerated or on probation or parole
- Sons are falling behind in school; addiction to video games; inability to communicate socially; music, TV, and films that encourage boys to become macho jerks; how hard it was for them to get their son to pick up a book
- Boys demonstrate a stunningly low reading proficiency
- Grand Theft Auto is overwhelmingly played by boys (and depicts for them a manhood defined by fighting, guns and violence)
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