Listening to Signals
“Men may rule the world, but 9-year old boys do not.”
Those words were spoken by a choir director several years ago, when I interviewed him for a book I was writing about boy sopranos. I had just asked him how we could possibly reconcile the exclusion of girls from boys-only choirs in a social context in which patriarchy was still a pressing social problem.
I’ve thought back to those words many times over the past several months, particularly in the wake of a presidential election that featured strident rhetoric about men and masculinity. At the same time, researchers increasingly warn of declining well-being among men who were formerly 9-year old boys. They make up the majority of deaths from suicide, are less likely to finish college, and consistently report fewer close friendships than women.
While some head-scratching is required to reconcile these inequalities with the reality of male power, I’m convinced that educators and school leaders should be curious about this disconnect. Acknowledging the vulnerability of boys and men is critical for cultivating healthier forms of manhood.
As an L+D fellow this year, I’ve been working on the practice of “signal hunting”: looking for patterns of change and emergent needs in observable social signs. Consider the following indicators – or rather, alarm bells – about how boys and men encounter reading, a practice that is both a central component of schooling and a way that human beings learn empathy:
As the nation’s report card confirmed earlier this month, measures of reading ability for all kids in grades 4 and 8 have continued to decline since 2022, a slide with particular implications for boys, whose reading scores are traditionally lower than those of their female peers, through grade 12.
In 2020 The Pew Research Center reported that only 38% of 9 year old boys say they read for pleasure outside of school; for 13-year old boys, that figure was 14%.
Ruth Whippman, in her excellent recent book Boymom, notes that many popular chapter books for young readers – such as Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Big Nate, Captain Underpants, and My Weird School often feature one-dimensional male characters who confirm the stereotype of the “school-hating boy.”
Women spend more time reading than men, and married men read more than men in other marital statuses (there is no difference in reading by marital status for women).
David Morris recently authored a New York Times op-ed about the decline of male authors in contemporary fiction. He observes that novels written by men are now under-represented on the New York Times best-seller list, and notes that men are increasingly scarce in the creative writing program that he directs.
What do all of these signals have in common?
Taken together, they underscore the truth of that choir director’s observations – that patriarchy can exist independent of, and outside of, the vulnerability, fear, sadness, and isolation that individual boys (and men) so often experience. They highlight the destructive effects of conventional masculinity – which implies that a “real man” is emotionally disconnected, physically strong, and interested in various forms of domination. And they suggest that some of these impulses are playing out in the ways that boys and men interact with the world of fiction and its potential for helping young people develop emotional awareness. What are books if not an invitation to situate yourself within a worldview outside of your own?
These signals also suggest to me that we need to work harder to help boys find meaningful connections in books, at school, and with each other. In the same way that decades of attention have addressed the gap between boys and girls in STEM fields, we need to help boys engage in what Richard Reeves calls the HEAL sector – work in health, education, administration, and literacy. (Reeves’ new book for boys Yes, Boys Can! is a great example of making these options available in book form for young readers). Similarly, the author Francesca Cavallo has written a forthcoming book Stellar Stories for Boys of the Future that will offer young male readers stories of connection, empathy, honesty, and care.
There’s more that schools can do, too. Whippman’s book chronicles a class titled “Modern Masculinities” at the Browning School in New York, where boys in 5th through 12th grade participate in weekly classes that explore and discuss the limitations and harms connected with many forms of traditional masculinity. The curricular flexibility of independent schools makes them ideal laboratories for conversations with boys and young men about the harms that patriarchy inflicts on all of us.
I’m also encouraged that authors like Reeves, Whippman, and Cavallo are holding our culture accountable for recognizing the ways in which boys’ struggles are, in some part, borne of the limited imagination that we offer them from the start. I’d love to see more authors, teachers, and schools take explicit steps to offer boys a broader range of examples of how men can engage with school, in their relationships, and with care for the world.
Thinking back to the words of that boy choir director, I realize now that he was on to something big. Yes, our society still bears the unmistakable marks of patriarchy, and much work remains to mend those inequities. But nine-year old boys (or twelve or seventeen-year old boys, for that matter) don’t yet run the world. We have an opportunity to listen to them, to meet their vulnerability when we find it, and stay curious about what they need for us to help them thrive.
