Young Men Discouraged From Science

[TheMastersNemesis]

In the sputnik era taking an interest in science by young men was encouraged. My sense is that if you are a young man today unless you are a sports jock who is pursuing women and being chip off the old block you are not valued. If you do take in interest in things like science, math or similar learning like the arts you are ridiculed as a sissy and a panty waste. Dumbness and crassness is valued more than being bright and intelligent.

Maybe that is why there are now more women in college than men. It is a troubling trend. Young men are portrayed as stupid, rude and ignorant in so many commercials that I see on television. When I hear chatter of younger men they seem shallow and self absorbed. There seems to be little curiosity about the world around them. That does not mean that all young men are ignorant or stupid it just means that too many seem to be.

A lot of fathers seem to be more interested in how much of a brute man their son is than anything else. Their dreams for their sons seem to be for them to be a football player, basketball player, or some other raging hormone sport.

Our nation is quickly falling into an abyss of ignorance as the world at large progresses into the 21st century.

[freshwest]

1. Yes, I've been disturbed by that media meme for years. It's intentional by media.

[WingDinger]

2. Cept for one thing. Employers are preferring liberal arts, not MBA.

well rounded is the new focused.

My parents would have been just as upset if I went out for pro sports as if I was to become a poet, or actor.

[JHB]

16. What does an MBA have to do with science?

or education, for that matter. But I admit some bias on the second point.

[bighughdiehl]

21. Uh....since when?

I do not see employers wanting liberal arts.
All the job ads i see want a very unusual degree of specialization....
even for entry-level jobs. They want workers who are
technically competent, but not able to think(see George Carlin)....because they
might question things. Pray tell, where are you getting that liberal arts are
back in?

[WingDinger]

28. There was an article here, just yesterday.

MBA, is another word for 90's era legitimate degree. Yes, employers want those fresh out with the latest familiarization with tech. But, they cant seem to manage. To manage, you need more than a one trick pony.

Enlisting both right and left brain in education is getting more press now. You could call it the whole package.

[bighughdiehl]

30. Didn't see the article

I guess some employers might be catching on that employees
who can think about things other than where to click the
mouse can be okay, but this isn't filtering into actual known job
openings yet. The corporate elite still seem to want
employees to fit a narrower and narrower and narrower
ans narrower mold.

[drm604]

3. When I was in school during the sixties and early seventies

being good at math and science drew ridicule just as it does today. None of what you describe is the least bit new. Answering correctly in math class or belonging to the science club made you a bully magnet.

[NYC_SKP]

4. Not new, but possibly worse.

Bad boys (and girls) are oddly admired, see misbehaving politicians and sports figures and Martha Stewart, any of whom, I believe, would be out of a job if found out 30 or more years ago.

eom.

[drm604]

5. Again. Nothing new.

See Bonnie and Clyde. See Billy the Kid. Practically pop cultural icons in their times.

For the record, I am not in any way belittling the problem. It's a big problem. I'm just saying it's a long standing problem.

[Johonny]

6. the economic drivers back then were different than today

A young man with a math or science degree can earn much more going off to law school or getting an MBA than hitting 4 to 7 years a grad school.

[quaker bill]

8. I was a science geek, good at math, and in the Chess club, in HS, tell me about it

I was 6' tall and weighed literally 98 pounds. All I had going for me was that I could run pretty fast. I got by through becoming friends with one of the biggest lummoxes on campus. He bent steel rebar on the weekends by hand for his dad's construction business for extra cash, money he largely spent on booze and hookers. He always sat just behind me and to the right, so I took tests in a manner where he could always see the answers. He was happy to make very sure I was always safe. He graduated and then went on bending rebar and swinging a hammer for a living....

[drm604]

9. Science geek, good at math, and in the freaking BAND!

How the hell did I even survive?

Well, at least I played the trumpet, which was sort of cool. I can't imagine what it was like for the guys with clarinets or flutes!

[quaker bill]

15. This may date me a bit, but the band was cool when I was in HS

mostly because they had some of the best drugs. You are right about trumpet players, it would apply to drummers as well. The clarinet and flute guys, not so much.

[drm604]

17. I'm talking 60s and 70s

so I'm sure there were drugs around but, hell, I was too much of a nerd for that. If the band did have drugs, I didn't know about it.

[Johnny Rico]

20. Got you beat: Science geek, good at math, glee club, and theatre.

I was bullied through 10th grade...then the bullies seemed to grow out of it. Go figure.

[drm604]

22. Ooh, glee club!

I forgot about that. I was in the glee club in elementary school. I never got involved in theater. I'm not sure why, because I'm pretty sure that I would have enjoyed it (I assume you mean doing plays).

[Johnny Rico]

23. Musicals, actually, not plays.

My biggest role was "Jud" in "Oklahoma!".

[drm604]

26. Oh. No that probably wouldn't have interested me.

To unmanly. I'll probably have to start bullying you now.

I'm not into musicals, but Oklahoma (the movie version) is one of the few musicals that I do like.

[gkhouston]

31. It's one of the few musicals that made a good transition to the big screen.

Counter-example: "Guys and Dolls".

[Permanut]

7. They're just discouraged

by them sciency types trying to convince them that the earth is A)round, and B)more than 6,000 years old. And trying to argue that the marine fossils at the top of Mt Everest were put there by something other than Noah's flood. And it must be a pain in the butt to try to explain where all that water went.

[Zalatix]

10. Go into science, become unpopular with the girls, get laughed at by the boys for being a nerd,

go to college, amass a whole lot of college debt, and then graduate to find your science-related job has gone overseas.

What's not to like about science?

[drm604]

18. Maybe that's the part that's changed.

In the 60s and 70s I was an unpopular science and math nerd. I got a BS in Comp Sci and now I'm doing better than probably 75% or more of my class. On the rare occasion I do run into someone from high school, they tell that they knew I'd be one of the ones who'd succeed. Yea right, I suppose that's why you all either ignored me or bullied the hell out of me.

[Zalatix]

29. I watched computer engineering jobs go overseas in the 1990s

and I knew the heydays of the science and computer geek were numbered.

[drm604]

32. Learn to manage corporate networks.

It's hard to ship that overseas.

[Zalatix]

35. TONS of competition for that.

We need serious tariffs to knock off IT offshoring. Serious tariffs.

[drm604]

36. Hey, no argument about that.

And it's not just offshoring that's the problem. Employers are gaming the H-1B system to bring in lower paid workers when workers with those same skills can be found right here.

[riderinthestorm]

11. Do you have any data to support this anecdote? That young men are discouraged from science?

My 24 and 15 year old daughters mean I'm in the thick of teenage ambitions, dreams, teacher preferences, college planning etc. both with them, their friends, and their boyfriends.

I haven't seen ANY teachers, parents, mentors or even general society discouraging boys from pursuing science careers.

To the degree that science is usually associated with geekiness, it appears to me to be the same as it ever was....

[Initech]

12. Yes. God forbid we have an educated and informed populace.

Instead we're stuck with Fox ruling all media and the fucking tea party. George Carlin was right - you vote garbage in, you get garbage out. If we had encouraged young people to nurture their intelligence instead of waste think of where we'd be.

[jp11]

13. What?

How is what has been 'standard' discouraging them?

Even during the sputnik era it was the fighter/experimental pilots who were championed and became the astronauts ie 'rockstars'. The 'nerds' were relegated to building the technology etc and while needed not celebrated as the astronauts.

For years/decades/centuries it has been the stereotype alpha male that is encouraged, from society to fathers wanting sons to 'be proud of'. The son who spent time in the lab was often the 'shame' of the family over the footballer or jock. Only in more recent decades has there been more of an acceptance or understanding that intellectualism among men isn't a weakness though you might not know this from pop culture.

If women are surpassing men in college, and they have been for a while, it has been because men have 'accepted' the stereotype that they need to be 'mindless' or that applying themselves to academics or other skilled training programs wasn't manly. We could also guess it might be because many are out to prove themselves by becoming 'earners' to prove their worth as mates as they have been pressured to do so for so long. Many doing this only to be surpassed by women going to college and getting an education and better careers making more money and often looking down on those men who didn't go to college.

While women have become more liberated and applied themselves to casting off their stereotype roles of homemakers and wives serving their men the same is often not true of men. Many of whom still see a 'need' or 'desire' to be the 'breadwinner' not just for their own egos but to show their worth and making the 'mistake' of thinking they can do that absent post secondary education.

While I agree men have been and are still often portrayed as being stupid/rude as well as being considered less than women, ie death objects, it isn't the sole reason they don't apply themselves towards academics. To impress women, gain their freedom, prove their 'manliness' many men will jump into the workforce for short term financial gains over staying 'dependent' and going to school/etc.

[SATIRical]

33. I disagree

"'accepted' the stereotype that they need to be 'mindless' or that applying themselves to academics or other skilled training programs wasn't manly."

I think it is that it has become "acceptable" to not do those things. As a young adult I also found video games more interesting than schoolwork or work-work. And that was when the games were far less engaging. If it acceptable for guys to sit on the couch and do nothing, many will. Sure, that is not attractive to many young women, but when you have Internet porn, who cares?

[Honeycombe8]

14. Is this true? I'm in my 50's, so it's been a while since I've been in school.

I thought it was considered geeky in a cool way to be involved in science, math, computers, and any sort of geeky thing. That never was the way to get the babes. Ever. The way to get babes has always been by being athletic or musician or singer (think Rudy Valee). But the teachers, parents, smart girls, and particularly by college - almost any girl who didn't have a musician boyfriend, liked the geeky boys.

My nephew is a whiz at computers & math & the sciences. He's also a handsome lad, if I do say so myself. Not cool?

Say it ain't so!

[JHB]

19. “Mr. Spock Is Dreamy!” .:. by Isaac Asimov

Perhaps relevant to this discussion, a somewhat older perspective

Originally published in TV Guide, April 29, 1967.
Scientist and science-fiction writer Isaac Asimov is incredulous when his 12-year-old daughter tells him Star Trek's Mr. Spock is "dreamy":
http://www.fanpop.com/spots/zachary-quintos-spock/articles/120017/title/spock-dreamy-isaac-asimov

Do you know what this means to me? Can you imagine what a load of guilt it has taken off my back? Can you imagine what a much greater load of vain regret it has put on my back?

But, heaven help me, it wasn’t my fault. I was misled. When I was young I read books about children; books for which Tom Sawyer was the prototype. Anyone else old enough to remember those books?

Remember the kid hero? Wasn’t he a delightful little chap? Wasn’t he manly? He played hooky all the time and went swimming at the old swimming hole. Remember? He never knew his lessons; he swiped apples; he used bad grammar and threw rocks at cats. You remember.

And do you remember that little sneaky kid we all hated so? He was an unbearable wretch who wore clean clothes, and did his lessons, and got high marks, and spoke like a dude. All the kids hated him, and so did all the readers. Rotten little smart kid!

[jobendorfer]

24. some practical observations

Disclosure: I'm a 50 year old software engineer, lucky enough to still be working. Which means I have a bit of loose change to dabble in one of my personal interests, physics. So as I'm sitting in classrooms full of 20-somethings majoring in physics ( and trying to keep up, it's been 30 years since I took a differential equations course ), this is what I see -- with respect to physics majors.

To get a B.S. in physics, you're going to work very, very hard in very very difficult courses. It will take you approximately 5 years to get through fulltime, and longer, possibly 3 years longer, if circumstances force you to work part-time. You will come out, at our local public university, about 15k to 20k in debt. After all this, you have very few if any immediate job options. The shortest-term one is to get a teaching credential and start teaching at a high school. Another handful will get health physicist jobs ( basically, riding herd on the various diagnostic imaging machines used in your local clinics and hospitals. )

If you double-down and go to grad school: you are looking at another 7-10 years to complete a Ph.D. You will pile on more debt, perhaps as much as 50k to 100k ( again, at the low-end public university ). At this point, you are now somewhere in your early to mid thirties. Is there any chance of immediate, permanent employment? No. You will have sell yourself into a series of 1 to 2 year post-doc appointments and start publishing. If you are lucky, you might get picked up by a funded research program ( you won't have enough chops or credibility to get grants of your own yet ). And so you wait into your 40s, basically for some tenured professor to retire or keel over dead, then fight it out with hundreds of other Ph.D level physicists to grab a tenure track assistant professor slot, and finally get a job where you can think about something besides your next post-doc appointment.

Those are the economics facing physics majors. Any wonder the kids aren't signing up in droves?
For what it's worth, the male :: female ratio in the courses I've attended has been on the order of 15::1.

I'd imagine there are a few more options in chemistry. Don't know enough to speak about the biological or environmental sciences, but perhaps someone who does know the situation on the ground will speak up and tell us about it.

I think it's just a shame that one of the brightest men I know, with a Ph.D in physics from Yale, a member of the team that solved the solar neutrino mystery, is today running a software quality assurance program in a Seattle medical technology firm. Because that job comes with a steady paycheck and benefits, and he can feed his kids.

J.

[lumberjack_jeff]

25. Young men are discouraged from college in general. n/t

[mainer]

27. It's the nutty American emphasis on SPORTS SPORTS SPORTS

We worship our football players, not our scientists. We pour tons of money into HS football programs, uniforms, and coaches, while science teachers are being cut.

Naturally boys want to be the heroes of their schools, and that means being a sports star.

[pstokely]

34. Academic competitions don't have huge ESPN contracts

[Bucky]

37. Wow, it's like you've been sitting in on the high school classes I teach

I usually start off my lectures with "None of you take any notes. Learnin's for pussies."