The Western education system, including universities, is failing boys by enforcing a one-size-fits-all model that rewards compliance, verbal skills, and sedentary behaviour, traits often associated with girls, while punishing the natural energy, risk-taking, and physicality of boys. This bias begins in early childhood and compounds through higher education, leading to worse academic performance, higher disciplinary issues, and poorer life outcomes for males. Our following analysis, rooted in data from Michael Snyder's article, details this systemic unfairness from a pro-male perspective. The statistics are mainly from America, as data is more readily available, but much the same applies to say Australia.

1. Early Education Disadvantages

Kindergarten Retention: Boys are 45% more likely to repeat kindergarten than girls (145 boys for every 100 girls). This reflects a system that penalises boys for behavioural differences, such as higher energy levels or slower verbal development, which are often mislabelled as deficiencies rather than natural variations in male development.

Reading and Writing Gaps: By 3rd grade, girls outperform boys in reading and writing by half a grade level, a gap that widens to nearly a full grade by 8th grade. Only 20% of 8th-grade boys are proficient in writing compared to 41% of girls. Schools prioritise verbal skills, which girls statistically develop earlier, while undervaluing spatial or hands-on learning where boys often excel.

2. High School Disparities

GPA and Advanced Courses: Girls earn higher GPAs (51% of girls vs. 36% of boys with a GPA above 3.0) and are 1.9 times more likely to be in the top 5% of graduating GPAs. Boys, conversely, are 1.6 times more likely to be in the bottom 5%. This gap reflects a system that rewards compliance and verbal proficiency over the competitive or exploratory tendencies of boys.

Disciplinary Actions: Boys are 2.5 times more likely to be suspended or expelled (72% of expulsions and 70% of suspensions in 2017-2018 were boys). Schools often misinterpret boys' natural assertiveness or restlessness as disruptive, leading to disproportionate punishment that alienates them from education.

Graduation Rates: Boys graduate high school at a lower rate (83%) than girls (89%). This gap compounds earlier disadvantages, as boys who fall behind are less likely to recover in a system not designed for their needs.

3. Mental Health and Societal Outcomes

ADHD and Autism Diagnoses: Boys are twice as likely to be diagnosed with ADHD or autism, often due to behaviours (e.g., impulsivity) that clash with classroom expectations. These diagnoses can stigmatise boys and lead to medication or interventions that suppress their natural traits rather than channelling them productively.

Suicide Rates: Young males (15-24) have a suicide rate of 21 per 100,000, compared to 5 per 100,000 for females. This disparity, which has worsened since 1968, reflects the psychological toll of a system that marginalises boys, leaving them feeling unsupported and disconnected.

College Enrollment and Beyond: Only 57% of male high school graduates enrol in college, compared to 66% of females. Post-college, 19% of men aged 25-34 live with their parents, compared to 13% of women. These gaps highlight how educational disadvantages translate into reduced career prospects and independence for men.

4. Root Causes: Systemic Bias and Family Breakdown

Feminised Education System: Schools emphasise sitting still, verbal expression, and collaborative work, which align with stereotypically feminine traits. Boys, designed for physical activity and exploration, are penalised for their natural inclinations. The lack of male teachers (only 24% of K-12 teachers are men) exacerbates this, as boys lack role models who understand their needs.

Fatherlessness: Boys from broken homes, where father absence is increasingly common, face worse outcomes. By age nine, fatherless children have 14% shorter telomeres, correlating with reduced life expectancy. Fathers provide discipline, guidance, and a model of masculinity that schools cannot replace, yet family breakdown is ignored in educational reform discussions.

Cultural Narrative: The societal push for female empowerment hascome at the expense of addressing male struggles. Boys are stereotyped by crazed feminist teachers, as inherently flawed, with terms like "toxic masculinity" framing their natural behaviours as problematic, further alienating them.

Proposed Solutions

Reform Curriculum Design: Incorporate hands-on, project-based learning and physical activity to engage boys' spatial and kinaesthetic strengths. Reduce emphasis on rote verbal tasks that disproportionately favour girls.

Teacher Training and Recruitment: Train educators to understand male developmental differences and recruit more male teachers to serve as role models. Address the implicit feminist bias that labels boys as "problematic."

Disciplinary Overhaul: Replace punitive suspensions with mentorship or restorative programs that channel boys' energy constructively, recognising their behavior as a product of biology and environment, not defiance.

Support Strong Families: Promote policies that strengthen two-parent households, particularly emphasising fathers' roles in boys' development. Public campaigns should destigmatise masculinity and highlight its positive contributions.

Mental Health Resources: Provide targeted counselling for boys, addressing the unique pressures they face in a system that devalues their traits. Normalise help-seeking to reduce suicide rates.

The education system's bias against boys is a conspiracy based on a structural failure to accommodate their biological and psychological needs; cultural death by omission. By treating boys as malfunctioning girls, schools set them up for academic failure, alienation, and societal marginalisation. The data, higher retention rates, lower GPAs, disproportionate punishments, and worse mental health outcomes, prove this crisis demands immediate attention. A pro-male perspective does not diminish girls' struggles but seeks balance, ensuring boys are valued for their unique strengths rather than punished for them. Reforming education to embrace masculinity, alongside robust family support, is critical to reversing this trend and building a stronger society. Or, we go ever-further down the path of social collapse.

https://michaeltsnyder.substack.com/p/12-facts-that-prove-that-our-society

"Does our society treat boys like malfunctioning girls? In this article, I am going to show you a whole bunch of numbers which prove that our boys have fallen behind our girls in many different areas. From a very early age, our society tends to reward feminine characteristics and it tends to suppress masculine characteristics. Little boys just don't like to sit still and pay attention for long stretches of time. They are designed to be hunters and explorers and adventurers. But our schools are not designed for hunters and explorers and adventurers. As a result, boys tend to have disciplinary problems more often than girls, and girls tend to get higher grades than boys.

Without a doubt, there are a lot of girls that are struggling in this day and age too, and I don't want to minimize that one bit. Our system of education is deeply broken, and there are millions upon millions of broken families in this nation. So the truth is that we have failed both genders.

But statistics show that our boys are faring significantly worse than our girls. The following are 12 facts that prove that our society is causing boys to fall way behind girls from a very early age…

#1 Boys are being forced to repeat kindergarten far more often than girls…

For every 100 girls who repeat kindergarten, 145 boys repeat the grade. Students who are retained often exhibit behavioral problems, perform below their peers in literacy skills during kindergarten, and, on average, continue to lag behind their peers academically by the end of 1st grade, research shows.

#2 Girls outperform boys in reading and writing by a very wide margin…

On average, girls in 3rd grade outperform boys in reading and writing by roughly half a grade level. By the end of 8th grade, girls are almost a full grade ahead. That's according to a 2018 study from Stanford Center for Education Policy Analysis that tracked assessments from 10,000 districts across the nation.

#3 In the 8th grade, only 20 percent of our boys are proficient in writing…

Compared to 41% of girls (which is itself not very good), by 8th grade only 20% of boys are proficient in writing. Girls score on average 0.15 standard deviations above boys in reading from kindergarten through high school. And today, reading and verbal skills predict college attendance.

#4 In high school, girls have much higher GPAs than boys do…

Girls, in addition to being more likely to take advanced courses in high school, tend to earn higher grade point averages than boys in high school. In one statewide study of public high school students, 51 percent of graduating female students earned a high school GPA above 3.0, compared to 36 percent of male students. Girls were 1.9 times more likely to be in the top 5 percent of graduating GPAs, and boys were 1.6 times more likely to be in the bottom 5 percent of GPAs.

#5 This next fact really shocked me. In the United States, boys are approximately twice as likely to be diagnosed with ADHD or autism…

Boys are roughly twice as likely as girls to be diagnosed with A.D.H.D. or autism, though experts caution that those may be underdiagnosed in girls, for whom symptoms can show up differently.

#6 Boys are much more likely to be suspended or expelled from school…

Boys are roughly 2.5 times more likely to be suspended or expelled from school than girls; of all expulsions from public school in the 2017-2018 school year (the last year the National Center for Education Statistics has available data), 72% of all expulsions and 70% of suspensions were of boys.

#7 Suicide rates for young males are far higher than suicide rates for young females…

Overall, suicide is more prevalent among men than women, and has increased among young people. But the increases are far greater for young men. In 2023, the suicide rate for males ages 15 to 24 was 21 per 100,000, up from 11 in 1968, according to an analysis of C.D.C. data by the American Institute for Boys and Men. The suicide rate for young women was five per 100,000, up from three.

#8 Girls graduate from high school at a much higher rate than boys do…

All this leads to a lower likelihood of graduating high school on time for boys than girls — 83 percent for boys compared with 89 percent for girls, according to a Brookings Institution analysis.

#9 Studies have shown that those that drop out of high school are much more likely to commit crimes and are much more likely to fall into poverty…

Boys who lag behind in school are less likely to graduate high school than girls. More high school dropouts means more crime, more suicides (even after controlling for gender disparities in the suicide rate), greater poverty, and greater unemployment. Rather than producing productive, well-adjusted citizens, high-school dropouts threaten the social fabric and increase stresses on the tax base.

#10 Young women enroll in college at a much higher rate than young men…

Women also outnumber men in college enrollment, which is linked to broader career prospects and higher earnings. Of recent male high school graduates, about 57 percent are enrolled in college, barely up from 54 percent in 1960, federal data shows. In that same period, women's college enrollment has surged past them — 66 percent are now enrolled, up from 38 percent. (For both, enrollment is down from prepandemic highs.)

#11 After college, young men are much more likely to live with their parents…

Among men ages 25 to 34, 19 percent still live with their parents, up from 14 percent in 1983, according to census data. Of women that age, 13 percent live with their parents, up from 11 percent four decades ago.

#12 One of the biggest reasons why young males are falling behind is because they aren't getting enough time with their fathers…

The statistics are jarring. Young men without both parents are more likely to spend time in prison than graduate college, according to sociologist Brad Wilcox's Get Married. In the United States, the second leading cause of death for men under 45 is suicide. Political economist Nicholas Eberstadt contends in Men Without Work that male workforce engagement is at the level it was during the Great Depression.

Political scientist Warren Farrell and counselor John Gray point out in The Boy Crisis that by age nine, children who are not getting enough time with their fathers have telomeres (chromosome indicators which predict life expectancy) 14% shorter than average.

We need to have strong families if we want to have a strong society.

There is no way that we can get around that.

Unfortunately, more marriages are failing and more families are breaking up with each passing day.

And then when boys from broken homes go to school, they are treated like they are malfunctioning girls.

So now we have an enormous societal crisis on our hands, and turning things around will certainly not be easy."