The following set of suggestions is aimed at saving costs, increasing social cohesion, and improving public safety and health. They can be accomplished through individual action and support from outside organizations, but would be accomplished much more quickly through policy changes. We urge more “barrel makers” to get involved with raising public awareness of these issues and applying long-term solutions.
Support the Father's Role
Currently, there is a White House Council on Women and Girls but no similar platform for men despite one being endorsed by a number of experts. A White House Council on Boys and Men is needed to tackle the lack of male teachers, boys falling behind in school, male emotional and physical health, workplace safety, and especially the issue of fatherlessness.
The government must create policies that emphasize a father's right to be present in his children's lives following divorce and custody battle situations, eliminate perverse welfare incentives for parents to live apart, mandate paternity leave that is equal to maternity leave, and encourage family members to visit male inmates.4
Sponsoring a nationwide male mentorship program would also bring more positive male figures into children's lives, especially given the rising number of single mothers. Separately, the large number of unemployed single mothers needs to be addressed. Policymakers must do more to get unemployed single mothers into the workforce. Helping reduce unemployment would not only boost the economy, it would increase savings in the welfare budget.
Limit the Use of Endocrine-Disruptors
The Food and Drug Administration recognizes consumer concern relating to the long-term health effects of endocrine-disruptors but still states that the “current approved uses of BPA in food containers and packing are safe.”5 The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), however, recently recognized BPA's adverse effects on liver, kidney, and mammary glands and recommended that the tolerable daily intake be reduced to 5 μg/kg bw/day—one-tenth what it used to be!6
Given the growing amount of research showing the damaging effects of these chemicals, some of which was discussed in Chapter 10, it is alarming that the government is not doing more to limit their use. Elsewhere, action is taking place. In San Francisco, for example, one-time-use plastic water bottles have recently been banned.7 Legislators decided to reduce the amount of pollution caused by the plastic bottles and protect the health of the city's citizens. We recommend similar bans be put in place. Consumers can also take charge by reading labels and avoiding products that contain these chemicals.
Get Junk Food Out of Schools
Obesity-related conditions such as heart disease, stroke, type II diabetes, and certain types of cancer are a few of the leading causes of preventable death—especially for men, who die from these illnesses in greater numbers. The estimated annual medical costs for people who are obese are much higher than that of normal-weight people.8 It's clear that childhood habits tend to stick with people for the rest of their lives, so one obvious solution to reversing obesity trends is by improving food and beverage options in schools.
The government should consider requiring schools to install more water fountains and support city projects to connect bicycling and walking paths to schools from residential communities. By making it convenient to be physically fit and choose healthy options, cities can keep their rates of obesity low. When there are obvious social norms to encourage behavior change in particular ways, that is, when there are supportive situational and systemic elements present, individuals almost always benefit.
Get More Men into Schools
Both boys and girls perform better when they are taught by same-sex teachers,9 yet just 2 percent of kindergarten teachers and one out of five elementary schoolteachers is a man. Many people talk of changing the ratio to encourage more women to choose careers in science and technology and be present in greater numbers at higher-level positions within politics and private companies, which is terrific, but there should be similar efforts put into changing the gender-imbalanced ratio so that more men are represented in education and social sciences. Creating more single-sex programs in public schools should be seriously considered.
Improve How Schools Prepare Students for Their Lives Ahead
The logic is quite clear from an economic standpoint. We can invest early to close disparities and prevent achievement gaps, or we can pay to remediate disparities when they are harder and more expensive to close. Either way we are going to pay. And, we'll have to do both for a while. But, there is an important difference between the two approaches. Investing early allows us to shape the future; investing later chains us to fixing the missed opportunities of the past.
—James J. Heckman, Henry Schultz Distinguished Service Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago and Nobel Memorial Prize winner in economics10
Children's life chances are strongly influenced by the quality of their education . . . The highest performing education systems across OECD countries are those that combine high quality and equity. In such education systems, the vast majority of students can attain high level skills and knowledge that depend on their ability and drive, more than on their socio-economic background . . . the benefits of investing in equity in education outweigh the costs for both individuals and societies . . . in particular if investments are made early on.
—Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Equity and Quality in Education11
In order to keep students interested and engaged through high school and post-secondary education, schools themselves need to be improved from the primary level upward so students can take full advantage of education and training regardless of their background.
The OECD stated that the quality of a school depends on the quality of a school's teachers and administrators. Nations such as Brazil, Japan, and Poland, which all had improved scores on the PISA (an international aptitude test), have created policies aimed at bettering the quality of their teachers, such as adding to the requirements needed in order to obtain a teacher's license, increasing teacher's salaries to retain high-quality teachers and make the profession more appealing, offering incentives for promising students to go into the teaching profession, and providing incentives for teachers to attend teacher-training programs. Higher salaries, however, must be complemented by placing teachers in schools where their presence and skills can make the most impact.12
What happens after high school could be used as a measure of success for high schools. If schools or individual teachers could be rewarded for increasing the number of students who complete high school and go on to finish a certificate or degree program, it could change what and how well lessons get taught as well as ensure quality teachers get hired and remain for the long term. At present, few if any schools reward teaching excellence based on future outcome performances of their students.
The same model needs to be applied in prisons where guards get rewards, salary bonuses, or additional vacation time for prisoners in their unit who have good behavioral records, do not get into trouble, get paroled early, and then also for having a “clean” record when they are back in the free world.
Along with blending school with work situations or mentorship programs (discussed in the next chapter), the government could implement a career-counseling program for high school students. Many universities have such programs, but students need more information about their future options before they are confronted head-on with their future. There is no way the current ratio of counselors to students (500 to 1 in middle and high schools13) can make much of an impact on student well-being—present or future. Providing students with more guidance during this crucial period of their lives can be an effective way to help them overcome future obstacles and stick with their education because they will have a better sense of their options and know what steps are necessary in order to achieve their goals.
Sex education also needs a major overhaul. Camille Paglia, professor of humanities and media studies at the University of the Arts in Philadelp
hia, rightly argue that the schools' sex-education programs' failure to recognize gender differences is “betraying both boys and girls.” Due to the risk of pregnancy and undetectable sexually transmitted diseases that can compromise future fertility, the harsh reality is that young women have more to lose from casual sex than young men do. Paglia suggests that young men get lessons in basic ethics and moral reasoning about sex while girls learn how to tell the difference between sexual compliance and popularity.14
It makes no sense that we teach kids how to drive cars so they will be safe and responsible drivers, but we won't teach them anything useful about sex, even when it is just as vital to their health and safety. Even communities that are pushing for abstinence-only programs can still make improvements by talking realistically to young people about the risks and responsibilities of unprotected sex while still reinforcing the values parents are teaching at home.15
Schools need to employ certified health educators who can be objective and nonjudgmental, covering such topics as:
Communication around personal boundaries, safer sex, peer pressure, and common relationship issues.
How to know when you're ready to become sexually active.
Abstinence, preventing pregnancy, and how to use different kinds of contraception.
Preventing sexual and relationship abuse.
Questions to ask a prospective spouse before marriage.
How to detect breast, ovarian, and testicular cancers.
Fertility and aging.
Reproduction and pregnancy.
STI risks of various sexual acts.
Legal and privacy issues around cybersex and sexting.
How each sex goes through puberty.
In-depth anatomy and biology.
Positive aspects and health benefits of intimacy.
Awareness around LGBTQ issues.
Critical discussion around false representations of intimacy and romance in the media, television shows, and in online porn.
Relating basic life skills to intimacy and sexuality.
Students we spoke with suggested most of the above topics. The vast majority of them independently agreed that sex education should be taught yearly, starting at a young age and continuing on into older year groups. They felt that too often sex education petered out right around the time when they were becoming sexually active and had the most questions. An especially critical time period for them was fourteen to fifteen years old. They thought sex education should be less formal and be taught in smaller groups because it would be easier for them to take the topics more seriously and to discuss issues openly. Some wanted to separate the sexes when sex education was being taught while others didn't. One great suggestion was to teach a coed group of students, then separate boys and girls for anonymous Q&A sessions with a trained health professional.
Leading up to this kind of comprehensive sex education can be lessons in even earlier years about respecting the boundaries of others and empathy. Miranda Horvath, a psychology professor at Middlesex University in London, suggests that young people would benefit from learning these types of lessons before they encounter online porn:
If we start teaching kids about equality and respect when they are 5 or 6 years old, by the time they encounter porn in their teens, they will be able to pick out and see the lack of respect and emotion that porn gives us. They'll be better equipped to deal with what they are being presented with.16
Other reasons for the government to support better sex education and family planning are the health care costs saved and to reduce the high unemployment rate of young single mothers.
History books are never kind to those who stand idly by. Many a catastrophe could have been avoided if preventative action had been taken. In our view, it is worth investing and implementing these solutions because they will have positive and long-lasting impacts on current generations and future generations alike. We encourage both individuals and institutions to do their part to make them a reality.
SEVENTEEN
What Schools Can Do
There is no question that the current education system is broken. The Pathways to Prosperity Project warns that a failure to reform the system will “surely erode the fabric of our society.” As mentioned in earlier chapters, teens and young people in their early twenties—especially those from low-income families—are less likely to be employed and have job experience now than ten years ago. Economic inequality is increasing. If the young people of today are not better prepared to handle the challenges of the future, their animosity over their limited opportunities will only increase as their social status plummets with the high costs of living. The expense that they impose on society will also increase, and worst of all, many of their possible contributions to society will go unrealized.1
If we want our young people to develop effective skills that can be directly applied later in a career the most useful approach thus far has been to create and staff high-quality vocational and apprenticeship programs that let students experience real-life workplace situations and problems that they can solve during their part-time schooling. Many countries throughout northern and central Europe enroll their students in these blended programs after ages fourteen or fifteen. The results from educators doing this have revealed that classrooms collaborating with local businesses and companies show students the why behind underlying theories—which makes students become more engaged. Classrooms that do this are extremely effective in engaging students in learning and job training. This set-up also makes the transition from adolescence to adulthood easier for students.2
Teach Life Skills
When we asked students what class they would like at their school that didn't already exist nearly a third of them independently suggested a “life skills” class that included guidance on personal finance, how to apply for a job properly and handle job interviews, and dealing with adult responsibilities and life changes, such as the death of a relative. Several students said they were embarrassed that they were as old as they were and didn't even know how to make a simple budget or keep track of the money in their bank accounts. One student even remarked, “The lack of this class may be one of the reasons preventing young people from moving out of their parents' house.” It seems like common sense, let's teach it.
Incorporating practical life lessons into the classroom is not a pie-in-the-sky fantasy; these ideas are already in practice in many programs with demonstrated effectiveness. The key is their national scalability. Montessori and Waldorf schools around the world similarly create exciting learning centers with well-rounded curriculums for students of all ages. Montessori schools, for example, emphasize independence, freedom within limits, and respect for a child's natural psychological development, as well as technological advancements in society. Visit the websites for Montessori (www.montessori.edu) and Waldorf (www.WhyWaldorfWorks.org) to learn more.
Some public schools, too, are making revolutionary changes in the way they teach. In the documentary film Race to Nowhere, when an Oregon high school banned homework, kids started learning more and doing better on tests. Other schools are starting to follow in its footsteps. Visit the film's website (www.RaceToNowhere.com) to learn more.
Another alternative is offering gender-specific, not gender-blind, class options and assignments—boys don't want to read the same books girls do. Girls can also benefit from single-sex classes since gender-related self-concepts become less accessible in single-sex classes. One randomized study found that girls who took a single-sex physics class were less likely than girls from the coed class to think “physics is for boys.”3
The National Association for Choice in Education (NACE), www.4SchoolChoice.org, is an excellent resource for information on single-sex schooling. Another great program to check out is Project Lead the Way (PLTW), a nonprofit organization that works with schools from the primary through high school level, engaging teachers in professional development that leads to project-based learning where students acquire relevant knowledge and
skills in science and technology fields that help them succeed in future careers (www.pltw.org).
In addition to schools incorporating real-world challenges, teachers would also do well to take a page out of the video game industry—by making the process of learning enjoyable and rewarding.
Incorporate New Technology for More Interactive Learning
Technology is dynamic and children are becoming accustomed to the fast pace at which information now travels. There's no question students today need to be stimulated in new ways that they didn't need before. This is all the more reason boys tend to respond positively to well-organized teachers who can create a structured climate4 that includes technology's positive aspects while tapping into boys' creativity.
“Devices are catalysts,” says Harvard learning technologies professor Chris Dede.5 Many teachers are incorporating more technology into their lessons as a way to strengthen learning. Some take advantage of online forums to discuss topics from class or assign their lessons as homework (often in the form of a PowerPoint presentation) and use class time for clarity and discussion. These strategies have proven to be more effective and engaging for students than traditional or formal teaching methods.
If your school doesn't have its own internal network set up for classes, use existing social networks like Ning (www.ning.com), which cater to educators. Khan Academy is another great online resource that offers free tutorials and classes for anyone who wishes to bolster their knowledge in a particular topic (www.KhanAcademy.org).
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