Middle school is hard. Children leave the structure and relative safety of elementary school, and armed with a brand new set of hormones and "feelings,"get thrust into a school where the hall talk has moved from Pokémon to bra sizes and sex. Yes, sex. I get that. I thought I was prepared for it.

Then the middle school took my daughter and threw her in a world of sadness and despair, and I had to act fast. ...

On the first day of school, my daughter went willingly, happy for a new environment and I held my breath. I did not have to hold it for long. I got a call within an hour telling me that the principal wanted to talk to me. Here it comes, I thought. I was right; Cheyenne had made sure to tell everyone she was pagan and gay. And then something remarkable happened. They supported me and Cheyenne. Yes, they asked that she not announce to everyone (literally, because she does that) but they were not going to kick her out and would do everything to protect her from other students. The principal and teachers have become her greatest source of strength and inspiration.

It has not all been smooth sailing. She is once again on the outside of the class, since most of the children come from conservative backgrounds. Other girls will even tell her it is wrong to be gay. I do not know for sure, but I suspect the principal must have gotten one or two phone calls from other parents insisting that they expel my child. After all, many of them send their kids to Catholic school to get them away from the very influences espoused in my daughter. She is still a mediocre student, and is a constant thorn in her religious teacher’s side as she challenges every tenant of faith.

But Cheyenne has persevered and thrived.

Labels: adolescence, Catholic Church, culture, homosexuality, schools

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"What was he thinking?" It's the familiar cry of bewildered parents trying to understand why their teenagers act the way they do.

How does the boy who can thoughtfully explain the reasons never to drink and drive end up in a drunken crash? Why does the girl who knows all about birth control find herself pregnant by a boy she doesn't even like? What happened to the gifted, imaginative child who excelled through high school but then dropped out of college, drifted from job to job and now lives in his parents' basement?

Adolescence has always been troubled, but for reasons that are somewhat mysterious, puberty is now kicking in at an earlier and earlier age. A leading theory points to changes in energy balance as children eat more and move less.

At the same time, first with the industrial revolution and then even more dramatically with the information revolution, children have come to take on adult roles later and later. Five hundred years ago, Shakespeare knew that the emotionally intense combination of teenage sexuality and peer-induced risk could be tragic—witness "Romeo and Juliet." But, on the other hand, if not for fate, 13-year-old Juliet would have become a wife and mother within a year or two.

Our Juliets (as parents longing for grandchildren will recognize with a sigh) may experience the tumult of love for 20 years before they settle down into motherhood. And our Romeos may be poetic lunatics under the influence of Queen Mab until they are well into graduate school.

What happens when children reach puberty earlier and adulthood later? The answer is: a good deal of teenage weirdness. Fortunately, developmental psychologists and neuroscientists are starting to explain the foundations of that weirdness.

Labels: "emerging adulthood", adolescence, age at first marriage, childhood, children, culture, parenting, schools, work/family policy

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A recent study by the Yale University Child Study Center shows that Black children — especially boys — no matter their family income, receive less attention, harsher punishment and lower marks in school than their White counterparts from kindergarten all the way through college. A subsequent article published in “The Washington Post” reported that Black children in the Washington, D.C. area are suspended or expelled two to five times more often than White children. It’s a national trend that needs to be addressed.

Labels: boys, children, race, schools

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During his first-period broadcast Monday, the Norwood High athletic director Brian McDonough congratulated Will Higgins for breaking the meet record in the 50-yard freestyle the previous day at the Massachusetts South Division fall swimming and diving championships.

McDonough chose not to mention that it was a girls swimming championship.

“I didn’t want to get into that,” he said.

Anthony Rodriguez, another boy on the Norwood girls team, heard a grace note in McDonough’s omission.

“If people hear that you set a record, they’re like, ‘Oh my gosh, that’s awesome,’ ” Rodriguez said. “But if they knew you were competing against girls, they wouldn’t have as much respect for you.”

Higgins, a senior, and Rodriguez, a sophomore, are among roughly two dozen boys competing on girls teams in Massachusetts because their schools do not have boys swimming programs. They are able to do so because of the open access amendment to the state constitution, which was voted into law in the 1970s and mandates that boys and girls must be afforded equal access to athletics.

Boys have been members of girls swim teams since the 1980s, but until recently they were mostly a sideshow. It has only been in the last year or two that boys have swum well enough to draw attention — and people’s ire. The epicenter of the debate is the 50-yard freestyle, an event in which strength can trump talent or technique.

At the Division I state championships on Saturday at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, there are eight boys in the 28-swimmer field in the 50 freestyle. Although Norwood’s Higgins was ruled academically ineligible Friday and will not compete at the state meet, two of the top four seeds in the 50 freestyle are boys, giving rise to the possibility that a boy could be the girls state champion. ...

Paul Wetzel, a spokesman for the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association, said the state’s swimming committee would meet after the season, and among the topics on the table would be Higgins’s record swim.

Labels: adolescence, boys, culture, gender, gender differences, girls, schools

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The importance of marriage is to be taught to every pupil at the Government’s flagship free schools and academies.

The schools will be made to sign up to strict new rules introduced by Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, setting out what pupils must learn about sex and relationships.

Headteachers will be told that children must be “protected from inappropriate teaching materials and learn the nature of marriage and its importance for family life and for bringing up children”.

But the decision to spell out an explicit endorsement of marriage in the curriculum for tens of thousands of children is highly politically significant, and likely to be welcomed by Conservative traditionalists who have been concerned at a perceived failure by David Cameron’s Government to deliver on pledges to support married life.

Labels: Marriage, marriage promotion, schools, United Kingdom

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Wisconsin school teachers would have to promote abstinence and marriage over contraception in sex education classes, under a controversial bill passed by the state Senate on Wednesday night.

The Republican-backed legislation was passed 17-15 on party lines and will now head to the GOP-dominated state Assembly -- possibly as early as Thursday, the Wisconsin State Journal reported.

Democrats slammed the bill during floor debate, saying it would not give children the information needed to make responsible choices.

A state law was passed last year by Democrats, requiring schools that offer sex education to include information on contraception methods. ...

"We are trying to back away from the bill passed last year that we feel mandated sex ed that was too nonjudgmental, too explicit and at too young an age," said Republican state Sen. Glenn Grothman.

Labels: abstinence, culture, schools, sex education, Wisconsin

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In what looks to be the latest tragedy related to bullying, a 10-year-old apparently committed suicide after she complained of constant teasing at her Illinois elementary school Ashlynn Conner’s death has given us yet another reason to combat bullying. Not that anyone needed one.

Culturally, almost all of us have come to understand that bullying is unacceptable. Unlike a few decades ago (or less), when harsh schoolyard treatment was overlooked, most states now ban bullying and schools have adopted anti-bullying programs.

Obviously, it remains a problem. Part of the reason may be that the language that bans bullying tends to be vague and open for interpretation. That’s often by design. Though we can all agree that bullying is wrong, we can’t agree on exactly what it is.

Does it include hazing?

Yesterday, The Post’s Michael Alison Chandler wrote about the mixed success administrators at Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School have had in trying to control a school tradition that’s become an annual hazing ritual. Where officials were increasingly concerned “Color Day” had become an excuse to demean and mistreat younger students, some students have argued that it’s merely a fun rite of passage.

Does it include sexual harassment?

A recent American Association of University Women sexual harassment study ( I wrote about it in an earlier post here) found that almost half of middle and high school respondents reported being victims of sexual harassment. But commentator Katie Roiphe wrote in the New York Times this past weekend that much of what the survey deemed sexual harassment should be considered a normal part of adolescence.

Does it include hateful speech?

Bullying became a partisan issue in Michigan in the past week. An anti-bullying bill there was altered by a Republican legislator to allow an exception for “sincerely held religious belief or moral conviction.”

Gay and Muslim groups immediately protested the new language. Even Stephen Colbert mocked the inserted language lampooning by declaring, “Bullying is just fine, as long as you get a permission slip from God.”

Labels: adolescence, children, culture, freedom of speech, religion, religious liberty, schools, sexual harassment

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When "Yes on 8" signs began popping up on lawns in their Palo Alto neighborhood in 2008, Kathy and Lee Merkle-Raymond found themselves on the front line of the battle over gay marriage in California.

The same-sex couple, who were campaigning against Proposition 8, had to explain to their two young daughters why some of their friends' parents didn't want them to be allowed to marry. Then, with their daughters' encouragement, the couple decided to tie the knot before the ban on same-sex marriage took effect.

Their story is now the basis for "Operation Marriage," a new children's book that could make its way into classrooms and school libraries now that California passed a law ensuring that children learn about the contributions of gays and lesbians. Author Cynthia Chin-Lee debuted the book Wednesday at Kepler's Books in Menlo Park before an audience of local families, educators and faith leaders.

Chin-Lee, a publications manager for Oracle, has written several well-received children's books exploring cultural diversity in her spare time. With "Operation Marriage," she has taken on the subject of gay rights, mixing in broader themes of tolerance and bullying.

"I see this not only as a gay marriage issue, but opening the conversation of how all families are different," Chin-Lee said Tuesday.

"Operation Marriage" tells the story of a brother and sister who are disparaged at school by a boy who insists their moms aren't really married. After their parents console them, trying to explain the difference between a commitment ceremony and a traditional marriage, the siblings scheme to persuade their mothers to get legally married.

Labels: California, children, education, gay marriage, gay parenting, schools

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In an important test of the boundaries of the separation of church and state, the US Supreme Court on Wednesday heard arguments in a case examining whether a parochial school teacher may be barred from filing a discrimination lawsuit against her employer when the suit might entangle government in matters of religious faith.

The high court is being asked to decide whether Cheryl Perich and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) may sue the Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School in Redford, Mich., for allegedly violating the Americans with Disabilities Act. ...

The high court has never before identified the contours of the ministerial exception, although such an exception has been recognized and upheld in the lower courts. It has been found to clearly apply to a pastor, priest, or rabbi, but less clear is whether it applies to other employees involved in religious duties.

The Obama administration, arguing on behalf of the EEOC, urged the court to reject the claims of the Lutheran Church and embrace a line of analysis that would have virtually eliminated the ministerial exception. ...

At one point, Justice Elena Kagan asked Ms. Kruger whether she believed that a church has a right grounded in First Amendment religious protections to hire and fire employees without government interference.

Kruger answered that the government was basing its argument on the freedom of association, rather than the parts of the First Amendment that deal with religious freedom.

“We don’t see that line of church autonomy principles in the religion clause jurisprudence as such,” Kruger replied. “We see it as a question of freedom of association.”

The position surprised several justices, including Justice Kagan, the Obama administration’s former solicitor general, who said she found the comment “amazing.”

Labels: discrimination law, law, Lutheran Church, religious liberty, schools

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A 3 ½-year-old named Harry was playing at home in Los Angeles recently when his father walked in with a Target shopping bag. Inside was a special gift for the little boy: a sparkly princess Barbie doll.

“You could hear the gasp of excitement,” recounted Harry’s mother, Lee. “It just made his whole world.” ...

In general, researchers say, the behavior of very young children may not be a strong predictor of their adult sexual orientation. “Even when the child has extremely gender variant behavior at 4, it doesn’t necessarily mean the child will be gender variant at 10 or 15,” said Dr. Edgardo J. Menvielle, who directs the Gender and Sexuality Psychosocial Programs at Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, D.C. “It’s possible they will remain who they are and they may also change in a variety of ways.”

In other words, parents have to wait, a limbo that many find unbearable. Some rush to aggressive advocacy. Diane Ehrensaft, a therapist in Oakland, Calif., said that a parent might say to her, “ ‘I know my child is transgender and I’m ready to go with hormone blockers.’ ”

Her response? “Whoa, not so fast.”

Labels: boys, children, culture, gender, girls, homosexuality, parenting, schools, transgender issues

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First-graders at a California school celebrated Harvey Milk Day last week by learning about marriage equality.

Eric Ross, the author of new children’s book My Uncle’s Wedding, spoke to 40 six and seven-year-olds at a San Francisco elementary school. ...

A new state bill aims to make the teaching of gay history compulsory in California.

The bill, SB 48, has already been passed by the Senate. Its full name is The FAIR (Fair, Accurate, Inclusive and Respectful) Education Act.

Labels: California, culture, gay marriage, homosexuality, schools

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1. A third grader in Florida is often late for class. She tends to forget her homework and is unprepared for tests. The teacher would like to talk to her parents about this, but they fail to attend parent-teacher conferences. The teacher should:

a) fail the student.

b) fail the parents.



2. A middle-school student in Alaska is regularly absent, and his grades are suffering as a result. The district should:

a) fail the student.

b) fine the parents $500 a day for every day the student is not in school.



3. A California kindergartener has been absent, without a doctor’s note or other “verifiable reason,” 10 times in one semester. The district should:

a) call the parents.

b) call the district attorney and have charges brought against the parents.

The answer, under state laws that have been proposed (No. 1), or recently enacted (No. 2 and No. 3), is “b” on all counts: If a student is behaving badly, punish Mom and Dad.

Teachers are fed up with being blamed for the failures of American education, and legislators are starting to hear them. A spate of bills introduced in various states now takes aim squarely at the parents. If you think you can legislate teaching, the notion goes, why not try legislating parenting?

It is a complicated idea, taking on the controversial question of whether parents, teachers or children are most to blame when a child fails to learn.

Labels: Alaska, California, children, class, culture, Florida, parenting, schools

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We've all wanted to tell a jogger to put his shirt back on, but what happened recently in suburban Boston is a little different.

Westwood High track coach Tom Davis was fired last week because one of his runners decided to whip off a shirt during training on a 75-degree day. This wasn't a girl, by the way. It was a boy.

And the Westwood High athletic director, Karl Fogel, was so irate about it that Davis thought he was going to lay him out.

"I fully 100 percent was expecting to be swung at," the coach told NECN TV.

That wasn't the end of it. Davis was let go on the spot, in front of his team, and eventually escorted off school property. ...

The team was doing quite well this year under the second-year coach: one of the relay teams went to nationals less than two months ago and the outdoor team started off 5-0 this spring. But there was an undercurrent of tension at the school as Fogel told Davis that some members of the girls team felt uncomfortable when the boys ran without shirts. Davis even warned his team about possible punishment for not wearing a shirt.

Labels: culture, gender, schools

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Gaby Rodriguez would worry whenever anyone asked to touch her baby bump.

It wasn't because she felt shy or embarrassed. It was because the bulge -- fashioned from wire mesh and cotton quilt batting -- didn't actually contain a baby.

For the past 61/2 months -- the bulk of her senior year at Toppenish High School -- the 17-year-old A-student faked her own pregnancy.

Only a handful of people -- her mother, boyfriend and principal among them -- knew Gaby was pretending to be pregnant for her senior project, a culminating assignment required for graduation.

Her teachers and fellow students, except for her best friend, didn't realize they were part of a social experiment.

Neither did six of her seven siblings -- including four older brothers -- her boyfriend's parents, and his five younger brothers and sisters.

"At times, I just wanted to take it off and be done," she says. "I didn't want to go through this anymore."

But Gaby didn't give up the charade until Wednesday morning, when she revealed her secret during an emotional, all-school assembly.

The topic of her presentation: "Stereotypes, rumors and statistics."

"Teenagers tend to live in the shadows of these elements," she says.

Before taking off her fake baby belly in front of the entire student body, Gaby told her audience, "Many things were said about me. Many things traveled all the way back to me."

Then, she asked several students and teachers to read statements from 3x5 cards, quotes people actually said about her during the course of her experiment.

Labels: adolescence, culture, motherhood, pregnancy, premarital sex, race, schools, teenage pregnancy

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...If his fellow students and school administrators had been trained to recognize his deepening depression, Ms. Munley believes her son could have been saved. The signs were there, she said. On the ladder of suicide risk indicators, Robert's descent into self-ruin touched on nearly every rung.

At age 7, Robert witnessed the violent break-up of his parents' marriage over the Christmas holidays. When he returned from vacation, his kindergarten teacher noticed disturbing changes. The sweet, outgoing little boy who easily made friends suddenly became sullen, short-tempered and violent.

Ms. Munley chalked the changes up to the divorce and figured Robert would adjust with time. Two and a half years later, she began dating Robert's eventual stepfather and became pregnant. The boy resented the new rival for his mother's attention and began acting out.

"His actions became more aggressive, especially toward his siblings," Ms. Munley says. "At one point, he tried to choke his brother with a belt and put tacks in his bed.

"He was in a constant rebellious state. He put on weight, going from a slim size to a husky. He played video games constantly and did not participate in any sports."

Robert's stepfather demanded that the boy see a therapist, who said the problems were a product of normal sibling rivalry. Ms. Munley enrolled Robert in a karate class, hoping it would teach him respect and self-discipline, but his behavior grew steadily worse. Her son and husband were always at odds, and verbal abuse was common in the home.

She took Robert to another therapist. And another. And another. Each offered the same diagnosis: sibling rivalry. Finally, a psychiatrist suggested medication. Robert refused to take it. ...

She took Robert to his family doctor and asked for a depression screening. After speaking with Robert privately, the doctor said the screening was unnecessary.

Soon after, Robert and his girlfriend broke up. He went to Lowe's and bought duct tape and a hose and drove to a spot in Scott Twp. where they sometimes went to be alone. He ran the hose from the exhaust into the window and left the car running. A couple driving by spotted the car and called 911. Robert was taken to Community Medical Center and revived.

The attempt landed him in First Hospital Wyoming Valley in Wilkes-Barre for inpatient psychiatric therapy. He pleaded to come home, insisted he had made a mistake, nothing more, and had no intention of trying to harm himself again. After two weeks, the doctors agreed and he was released.

Soon after, Robert reconnected with his girlfriend but his relationship with his mother deteriorated. He got rid of his pet mouse, saying he didn't want it anymore. Ms. Munley would later learn that Robert also began to withdraw from friends at school.

When Robert said he was going to live with his father, Ms. Munley told him she would rather he stay with her, but would not stop him. It was the last time she saw Robert alive.

Labels: adolescence, divorce, schools

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Fifteen-year-old Meagan Campbell likes to hug. A lot. “I consider myself a hugger. It’s hi and goodbye. You’d feel like you’d been left hanging if you didn’t get a hug.”

At Citadel, her old high school in Halifax, hugs were administered at the start of the day in the locker room and again at the end. Girls are generally more demonstrative than boys, who passively accept a clinch. Hugs are generally reserved for close female friends. ...

Teenage hugginess is epidemic, and (outside of Canada) schools have taken notice, with some in the United States and Britain banning all public displays of affection between students. Kids protest, especially since administrators offer murky rationales: that extended embraces are a gateway to make-outs and sex in the halls, or that they choke corridors and distract in class.

Only staid handshakes were spared at a small New England high school that outlawed all physical touching between students this month. News of the policy went viral after a 17-year-old student at the school complained anonymously to FreeRangeKids.com, a parenting website.

The girl hoped to protest the rule, which was intended to “thin out the kissing couples who clog up the halls,” as she understood it. “Interpersonal touch is not inherently sexual, and to treat it as such is to make it so,” she wrote in a petition, adding, “… micromanaging merely infantilizes us.” ...

For other administrators, the fear is sexual. “Schools have to draw the line and hugs are probably an easy place to draw the line at because if you don’t draw the line there, where is the line going to be?” Utah’s Chris Williams told the Standard Examiner. The Davis School District spokesman said there were exceptions to the PDA ban, including hugs after a winning basketball shot.

Other schools were more exacting: A Texas school ban stipulated holding hands, while another in Virginia expanded the prohibition to include high-fives.

Labels: adolescence, culture, heteronormativity, schools, sex

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In my short time as a teacher in Connecticut, I have muddled through President Bush’s No Child Left Behind act, which tied federal funding of schools to various reforms, and through President Obama’s Race to the Top initiative, which does much the same thing, though with different benchmarks. Thanks to the feds, urban schools like mine—already entitled to substantial federal largesse under Title I, which provides funds to public schools with large low-income populations—are swimming in money. At my school, we pay five teachers to tutor kids after school and on Saturdays. They sit in classrooms waiting for kids who never show up. We don’t want for books—or for any of the cutting-edge gizmos that non–Title I schools can’t afford: computerized whiteboards, Elmo projectors, the works. Our facility is state-of-the-art, thanks to a recent $40 million face-lift, with gleaming new hallways and bathrooms and a fully computerized library.

Here’s my prediction: the money, the reforms, the gleaming porcelain, the hopeful rhetoric about saving our children—all of it will have a limited impact, at best, on most city schoolchildren. Urban teachers face an intractable problem, one that we cannot spend or even teach our way out of: teen pregnancy. This year, all of my favorite girls are pregnant, four in all, future unwed mothers every one. There will be no innovation in this quarter, no race to the top. Personal moral accountability is the electrified rail that no politician wants to touch.

My first encounter with teen pregnancy was a girl named Nicole, a pretty 15-year-old who had rings on every finger and great looped earrings and a red pen with fluffy pink feathers and a heart that lit up when she wrote with it. Hearts seemed to be on everything—in her signature, on her binder; there was often a little plastic heart barrette in her hair, which she had dyed in bright hues recalling a Siamese fighting fish. She was enrolled in two of my classes: English and journalism.

My main gripe with Nicole was that she fell asleep in class. Each morning—bang!—her head hit the desk. Waking her was like waking a badger. Nicole’s unmarried mother, it turned out, worked nights, so Nicole would slip out with friends every evening, sometimes staying out until 3 am, and then show up in class exhausted, surly, and hungry.

After a dozen calls home, her mother finally got back to me. Your daughter is staying out late, I reported. The voice at the other end of the phone sounded abashed and bone-weary. “I know, I know, I’m sorry,” she repeated over and over. “I’ll talk to her. I’m sorry.” ...

My students often become curious about my personal life. The question most frequently asked is, “Do you have kids?”

“Two,” I say.

The next question is always heartbreaking.

“Do they live with you?”

Labels: adolescence, children, class, culture, Fathers, fathers and daughters, Marriage, motherhood, out-of-wedlock births, poverty, schools, teenage pregnancy

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After pressure from homosexual activists, a committee of the Halton Catholic District School Board voted Tuesday night to recommend the scrapping of a policy that required schools to be faithful to Church teaching in the area of homosexuality. ...

The mainstream media, Marai, and other homosexual activists have focused discussion on the board’s decision to ban gay-straight alliances (GSAs), a policy that was instituted based on a directive from the Ontario bishops; but the targeted policy does much more than that.

It includes explicit wording to prevent instruction that undermines Catholic teaching. It also requires that teachers consult the Catholic Catechism’s teaching on homosexuality (paragraphs 2357-2358) when they address the topic, makes no mention of “sexual orientation,” and notably inserts “unjust discrimination” where the template policy had merely condemned “discrimination.” The policy also emphasizes that “equity” and “inclusion” must be interpreted in accordance with Catholic teaching, and are not acceptable unless they do.

The Catholic template policy that would replace the existing one, on the other hand, has drawn sharp criticism in part because it recognizes “sexual orientation” as a prohibited ground for discrimination, in direct opposition to a Vatican directive.

The Halton policy’s fate is expected to be determined by a vote at the board’s next meeting, January 18th, though there are hints that it could be delayed to February. ...

Chris D’Souza, a former equity officer for the Dufferin-Peel Catholic School Board, and one of the major advocates of the equity strategy in the Catholic schools, claimed in an interview with the Ottawa Citizen that the public should not confuse Catholic teaching with the mandate of the government-funded Catholic school system. D’Souza, who has delivered over 1,400 workshops across Ontario in the last eight years, with presentations in over a dozen Catholic boards, has made it a key point in his presentations to Catholics that “equity” involves accepting the homosexual lifestyle itself.

Labels: Canada, Catholic Church, homosexuality, religion, schools

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A teacher has been suspended after she gave her Grade 8 students a sexually explicit multiple-choice test that included questions about anal sex, lesbian encounters and penis sizes.

Several parents filed complaints after students at Andre-Laurendeau High School, on Montreal’s south shore, were asked whether or not “blacks have bigger penises” or if they agreed that “all sexual positions are comfortable.” ...

The school board has now opened an administrative investigation. School board director Andre Byette told QMI Agency that the exam was too explicit for young teens, adding that the teacher wrote the test herself as part of a religion and ethics course.

Labels: adolescence, Canada, schools, sex education

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...But America's tragic number — tragic because it is difficult to conceive remedial policies — is 70%. This is the portion of African-American children born to unmarried women. It may explain what puzzles Nathan Glazer.

Writing in the American Interest, Glazer, sociology professor emeritus at Harvard, considers it a "paradox" that the election of Barack Obama "coincided with the almost complete disappearance from American public life of discussion of the black condition and what public policy might do to improve it." This, says Glazer, is the black condition:

Employment prospects for young black men worsened even when the economy was robust. By the early 2000s, more than a third of all young black non-college men were incarcerated. More than 60% of black high school dropouts born since the mid-1960s go to prison.

Mass incarceration blights the prospects of black women seeking husbands. So does another trend noted by sociologist William Julius Wilson: "In 2003-2004, for every 100 bachelor's degrees conferred on black men, 200 were conferred on black women."

Because changes in laws and mores have lowered barriers, the black middle class has been able to leave inner cities, which have become, Glazer says, "concentrations of the poor, the poorly educated, the unemployed and unemployable."

High out-of-wedlock birth rates mean a constantly renewed cohort of adolescent males without male parenting, which means disorderly neighborhoods and schools. Glazer thinks it is possible that for some young black males, "acting white" — trying to excel in school — is considered "a betrayal of their group culture." This severely limits opportunities in an increasingly service economy where working with people matters more than working with things in manufacturing employment.

Now, from the Educational Testing Service, comes a report about "The Black-White Achievement Gap: When Progress Stopped," written by Paul E. Barton and Richard J. Coley. It examines the "startling" fact that most of the progress in closing the gap in reading and mathematics occurred in the 1970s and '80s. This means "progress generally halted for those born around the mid-1960s, a time when landmark legislative victories heralded an end to racial discrimination."

Labels: culture, economics, family structure, poverty, race, schools, single parenting

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