Male Role Models

[perdidochas]

Basementdweller:

Eamon your lucky......I pick up my kids on occasion from school, the Middle school is near the elementary and it is frightening that some of the boys have more makeup on than the girls. Died hair and skirts and legging, not kilts.

 

 

 

Response:

Wow. I've seen dyed hair, and makeup, but never the skirts and leggings. "skinny" jeans are as alternative as I've seen boys around here. I'm happy not to witness that kind of stuff, I'm afraid my comments (to my friends/family) would be less than courteous.

[sherminator505]

I think that male role models are important because boys need to learn how men are supposed to act towards others, and it takes a man to show this example through everyday actions. Women can tell the boys about this stuff, but they really can't demonstrate it in their everyday actions.

 

I don't mean to say that leadership in Scoutng should be exclusively male or anything like that. I do feel that a mix is appropriate, but situations where the leadership is exclusively or overwhelmingly female should be avoided if at all possible.

[moosetracker]

sherminator, I don't have a problem with that statement at all. Boyscouts is better if the SM & ASM side of the leadership is more predominantly male. A sprinkling of a mix is good. But, if the leadership is all male because no women are interested or qualified then that's fine.. You don't need to force a female into leadership in boyscouts for a mix unless you are co-ed Venture.

 

I have never seen a skirt on a boy.. I guess us in cow-hampshire are a little bit slower in catching up to the new fangled fashions, or I don't hang out on the right street corners.

[acco40]

guess if we continue to think of ourselves by race, sex, religion, origin and not as just people that unfortunately may be true.

 

I think the problem is that we transfer too much adult baggage onto our kids. When very young chidren are given cards with faces of adults - male, female, black, white, etc. and they are simply asked to separate them into piles, more will separate them based on race than on gender. As adults, we may look at this a "bad" or "wrong" but that's only because we put a value judgment on this separation. A child can easily see that a black person and a white person are different - skin tone, hair texture, etc. They may readily notice more differences in gender if we all went around naked and their sex hormones had already kicked in but at a young age but that has not happened.

 

Now, if a young child gets feedback from his parents that somehow noticing this difference is "wrong" - they must wonder why and all sorts of reasons may pop into their heads. As adults our "uncomfortableness" with "race issues" can lead us to avoid the topic all together.

 

So, is having adult male Scoutmasters such a bad idea?

 

For decades, it was assumed that children see race only when society points it out to them. However, child-development researchers have increasingly begun to question that presumption. They argue that children see racial differences as much as they see the difference between pink and bluebut we tell kids that "pink" means for girls and "blue" is for boys. "White" and "black" are mysteries we leave them to figure out on their own.

 

It takes remarkably little for children to develop in-group preferences. Vittrup's mentor at the University of Texas, Rebecca Bigler, ran an experiment in three preschool classrooms, where 4- and 5-year-olds were lined up and given T shirts. Half the kids were randomly given blue T shirts, half red. The children wore the shirts for three weeks. During that time, the teachers never mentioned their colors and never grouped the kids by shirt color.

 

The kids didn't segregate in their behavior. They played with each other freely at recess. But when asked which color team was better to belong to, or which team might win a race, they chose their own color. They believed they were smarter than the other color. "The Reds never showed hatred for Blues," Bigler observed. "It was more like, 'Blues are fine, but not as good as us.' " When Reds were asked how many Reds were nice, they'd answer, "All of us." Asked how many Blues were nice, they'd answer, "Some." Some of the Blues were mean, and some were dumbbut not the Reds.

 

Bigler's experiment seems to show how children will use whatever you give them to create divisionsseeming to confirm that race becomes an issue only if we make it an issue. So why does Bigler think it's important to talk to children about race as early as the age of 3?

 

Her reasoning is that kids are developmentally prone to in-group favoritism; they're going to form these preferences on their own. Children naturally try to categorize everything, and the attribute they rely on is that which is the most clearly visible.

 

We might imagine we're creating color-blind environments for children, but differences in skin color or hair or weight are like differences in genderthey're plainly visible. Even if no teacher or parent mentions race, kids will use skin color on their own, the same way they use T-shirt colors. Bigler contends that children extend their shared appearances much furtherbelieving that those who look similar to them enjoy the same things they do. Anything a child doesn't like thus belongs to those who look the least similar to him. The spontaneous tendency to assume your group shares characteristicssuch as niceness, or smartsis called essentialism. - Newsweek http://www.newsweek.com/2009/09/04/see-baby-discriminate.html(This message has been edited by acco40)

[evmori]

I'm not sure I really understand what the point of this thread is other than to rile us up!

[Eagledad]

I saw an interview with Charlton Heston talking about filming of the planet of the apes. He said that by the end of filming, he was struck that the actors of the different groups of apes being portrayed tended to hang together during breaks with their specific bred of ape.

 

MY own personal opinion is that identifying ourselves with a group is an instinctive trait of survival. Safety in numbers so to speak, so the color shirt thing doesnt surprise me. But I think the adults react the same just as Charlton Heston observed.

 

I am a big believer that the primary role models for youths should be the same gender because watching others during the years up to puberty is how all our behavior is learned. I think the Scoutmasters should be males in boy scouts and females in girl scouts. However, when there isnt a good leader of the same gender, then it is better to have a good leader of the opposite gender than not have a good leader at all. I also believe a lot is learned having the other gender around as well so the youth learn the appropriate behavior of working together, but not always. Its OK for the guys or gals to have a weekend to themselves now and then. To me, there is a difference between "Moms not invited" and "No Women Allowed".

 

Barry

 

[sherminator505]

"I'm not sure I really understand what the point of this thread is other than to rile us up!"

 

But Ed, isn't that the point of MOST I/P threads?

[evmori]

NO Sherm it isn't.

[sherminator505]