The Education Of Playful Boys: Class Clowns In The Classroom

“Playful” boys are initially well-perceived by classmates but are labeled “class clowns” by teachers, with negative connotations.  Thus leads to a negative perception by classmates (and self) in addition to the teacher, leading to “lethal” educational outcomes.  By contrast, girl’s “playfulness” was not considered “intrusive” or “rebelliousness” and there were no negative consequences.  This is more evidence that the educational system is increasingly hostile to male students. Abstract:

This longitudinal study identified degrees of playfulness in 278 kindergarten-aged children, and followed them through their next three school years to determine how playfulness was viewed by the children themselves, their classmates, and teachers. Perceptions of the social competence, disruptiveness, and labeling as the class clown, were assessed from all perspectives in each of first through third grades. Hierarchical linear modeling was conducted to account for the nesting of the data (children within classrooms within schools) and for the lack of independence between the measures. A central finding confirmed extant literature in that gender differences were dominant, with playful boys regarded as distinct from their less playful counterparts, while no such discrepancies appeared for girls. Playful boys were increasingly negatively regarded as rebellious and intrusive and were labeled as the "class clown" by their teachers. These findings were in direct contrast with children's self-perceptions and those of their peers, who initially regarded more playful boys as appealing and engaging playmates. The data further revealed that the playful boys were stigmatized by their teachers, and this was communicated through verbal and non-verbal reprimands, and classmates assimilated this message and became increasingly denigrating of the playful quality in the boys. In stark contrast, girls' playfulness levels were not a consideration in ratings by teachers or peers at any grade, nor did their classroom behaviors show significant variation. These negative perceptions were likely transferred by teachers to peers and to the children themselves, whereupon they changed their positive perceptions to be increasingly negative by third grade. The results contribute to the literature by demonstrating that playfulness in boys (but not girls) is often associated with the "class clown" designation, and is viewed as an increasingly lethal characteristic in school classrooms, where compelling efforts are undertaken to discourage its expression and persistence

The Current Education Scam

And the subtitle is "The most infuriating article I have recently read"

Here is the article that triggered my indignation and fueled me sufficiently on a deep-freeze day to defrost, sit down and write:

A dying town

This attempt at journalism describes the plight of several people, who, according to the authors, are in their current plight due to their low level of education. And here is the supportive of this statement subtitle:

“Here in a corner of Missouri and across America, the lack of a college education has become a public-health crisis.”

The article is about Missouri Bootheel, the southeastern part of the state of Missouri, but it might as well describe countless other economically dying regions of the country.

And yet, instead of focusing on the real reasons for this large-scale human devastation across the country, this article instills “conclusions” that are manipulative, one-sided, judgmental and illogical. It is also highly offensive to the featured people.

Why do I claim that this article is judgmental?  Because, the authors claims that, “When people don’t have a plan B, it’s easy to lose hope.” 

Interestingly, I am not aware of too many people, no matter how high their education level is, who have multiple plans for their life and a long-term view on their development. How about you, dear authors, do you have plans B or C? How many of any high-powered individuals with a long list of educational degrees have a plan B? Every day, I meet highly educated people with impressive titles who have no idea what else they might do with their life if they were let go of their current positions. These are people who have dedicated two to 10+ years of their life to graduate studies. Some of them have entered the workforce at 35+. Our current education, no matter at what level, does not teach us to be flexible and to think ahead about plans B and C!

Why is this article illogical? Here is what the authors think, “He could have continued to law school, as he considered doing, and gone on to spend far fewer days worrying about stray sparks from power tools setting his jeans on fire. For some of his high-school classmates, college was their one-way ticket out of the Bootheel. It was for his younger sister, who now lives in Arkansas. The kids who didn’t go to college, or who didn’t finish, are the ones who stuck around”.

Alright, if we listen to the condescending advice of the authors, no one, not a single person in the U.S. should still live in Bootheel, MO (here is a new law for you, America: "no citizen left behind"). In fact, all other dying towns and cities across America should be abandoned as well. Everyone born in these places should get their college education and leave. They can become lawyers, for example!

By the way, dear authors, are you aware that some of these “dying” regions still produce smidgens of agricultural products? According to authors, “Farming is a tough industry, and he’s lost about $45,000 on his own crops over the past three years.”

Dear authors, do you think that America should close down all its farms? Then probably you should have given a bit more thought to your comparison of the prices of healthy food to these of fast food, ”A McDonald’s double cheeseburger is half the price of a packaged salad at Walmart.” Do you think that this absurdity has nothing to do with the fact that U.S. has systematically annihilated the farming in places like Bootheel, MO? Do you think that if we had a well-subsidized, local small-scale farmers, the prices of fresh produce, including these of salads, would still exceed the prices of fast food?

But let me focus on something slightly positive in this piece of “journalism”. The article does contain a grain of the real problem. “The jobs that once went to folks around here, they say, are now being done by robots or Mexicans or some combination of the two.”

Give people jobs. Make them proud of themselves again. And by the way, for some type of jobs, one does not need to go to college. One could go through apprenticeship and/or vocational training, and both would prepare for the job and pay the bills at the same time. This is the system established in one of the most developed and civilized countries in the world, Switzerland, and I have previously written about it. 

Instead, our current scam of education plunges young people into years of wasted time, buries them under piles of unnecessary information, and blinds them with false educational innovations that have no practical applications. Just look at the current curriculum of high schools, or glance at a college transcript of a Biology major undergrad who has taken “Roman Baths and Brothels” and “African Dances”. Surely, this type of “knowledge” combined with the debt attached to obtaining the “knowledge” would not have helped any of the people featured in the article!

Since one can twist and turn the reality in any direction, let me put forward another interpretation of the very same stories in this article. My interpretation is that whatever little education the main characters of the stories had, was not good enough, it was a waste of time. Their public education in elementary, middle and high school failed them, because it did not focus on the crucial things in life. Whatever education these people had, was useless, since it did not teach them how to take care of themselves and their finances. None of this is rocket science! How to take care of your health, how to eat healthy and how to budget could be taught in elementary and middle school. Just look what instructional videos on personal budgeting and finance were created in 1948.

The crux of the problem is that millions today are left without vocational training, at times when more or less every industry has pulled out of the U.S. and has gone for profit somewhere else. The current educational system cannot provide the solutions to the deepening economic crisis in the U.S. 

Only a revolution in the so-called "education industry" would allow us to face some of the problems mentioned in this article. This revolution should wipe out at least half of the pseudo-schools and programs in the country. Otherwise, the country roads that could bring people back home would be forgotten:

Country roads, take me home
To the place I belong
West Virginia
Mountain mamma, take me home
Country roads
Songwriters: John Denver / Taffy Danoff / William T Danoff