David Brooks, "Honor Code": How to Handle Male Rambunctiousness

"Very bad – is a constant trouble to everybody, and is always in some scrape or other. He cannot be trusted to behave himself anywhere."

Headmaster of St. George's speaking of eight-year-old Winston Churchill

In his latest New York Times op-ed entitled "Honor Code" (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/06/opinion/honor-code.html), David Brooks informs us:

"The education system has become culturally cohesive, rewarding and encouraging a certain sort of person: one who is nurturing, collaborative, disciplined, neat, studious, industrious and ambitious. People who don’t fit this cultural ideal respond by disengaging and rebelling.

Far from all, but many of the people who don’t fit in are boys. A decade or so ago, people started writing books and articles on the boy crisis. At the time, the evidence was disputable and some experts pushed back. Since then, the evidence that boys are falling behind has mounted. The case is closed. The numbers for boys get worse and worse."

However, Brooks concludes that the educational system must adapt itself to male rambunctiousness:

"Schools have to engage people as they are. That requires leaders who insist on more cultural diversity in school: not just teachers who celebrate cooperation, but other teachers who celebrate competition; not just teachers who honor environmental virtues, but teachers who honor military virtues; not just curriculums that teach how to share, but curriculums that teach how to win and how to lose; not just programs that work like friendship circles, but programs that work like boot camp."

I agree with David. I also remember a discussion I had with teachers complaining about the conduct of my oldest child while still in grade school. I mentioned Winston Churchill. They snickered: "Your boy is going to become another Winston Churchill?"

My oldest child is indeed not going to become another Winston Churchill. But if these same teachers were today to examine all of the challenges, including brushes with death in the military, that he has successfully navigated over the course of his twenty-five years on this planet, I'm sure their smug sniggers would be wiped from their mouths.

Moreover, I like the idea of a new affirmative action program for men.

I've shown Brooks's op-ed to my wife, who will tell you that I am also not trusted to behave myself anywhere. Most recently, she refused to take me to her rebirthing classes for fear of what I might "exhale" in her crowded classroom, but now, owing to David's opinion piece, she understands that she must allow for my unslakeable rebelliousness . . . not.