The philosopher and pedagogue Gregorio Luri considers in this article the reasons behind the victimization of boys in today's school, with a school failure rate much higher than that of girls. The full article can be read in El Ciervo magazine, May-June 2023.

The school is becoming an institution that is not very welcoming to the reality of the adolescent male. If they are even told that playing soccer in the schoolyard is sexist! Boys are not forgiven for not being girls. They are punished more often, they are more likely to repeat a grade, they get lower grades, they are diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) four times more than girls. They represent a higher proportion of low-performing students and most of the 20 percent of students who finish their compulsory education with notable difficulties in understanding a minimally complex written text are boys. The energy overload of children, far from being valued, is penalized. We know that boys find it more difficult to verbalize their emotions because they are reluctant to be psychologically transparent and this does not indicate less emotional intelligence, but rather greater modesty. A shame that I understand very well.

All this is inevitably associated with school dropout.

What it means to be a boy in our schools begins to become clear around the age of nine, when they have to go from learning to read to learning by reading. While the girls, who tend to show greater psychological maturation, experience their abilities, the boys run up against their limits... The result is that at the age of 11, the majority of boys stop reading.

The greater difficulties that boys tend to present frequently cause a reduction in the expectations that teachers project onto them. Hence, they are also less likely to be helped by pedagogical interventions.

Is it possible to create in our schools a positive vision of masculinity that understands that the way boys experience the world is not a mere social construction, that it is no coincidence that they are more reticent than girls to think by feeling, or who like to work with objects and live risky adventures?

No, being a child is not a syndrome.

Gregorio Luri