I’ll be discussing “Shafting Boys” on The Bill Meyer Show, Monday, January 30, at 8:35 am.

An aside: I don’t usually write about feminism; women are not my thing. I wasn’t even especially pleased with “Shafting Boys.” It just goes to show I am no good at predicting what readers care about. And they care deeply about this topic. A well-known Canadian libertarian (well, I think he should be well-known) explained to me why this column resonated:

— This is a topic 60% of the population can relate to: the 50% of men and the 50% of women who have boys.
— It illustrates vividly the effects of four decades of state intervention favoring peaceful, naïve women.
— It is very politically incorrect.
— It is written by a woman.
— It contains useful information on what is happening.
— There is a devastating joke in each sentence. [Yeah; I can never read to completion columns by The Other Women Who Write About These Issues—Cathy Yawn comes to mind. They’re all so boring, passionless, prim and proper, not to mention grim. To bore the reader is a stoneable offense.—ILANA]

More insights come from an American champion of freedom. Brian D. Ray, Ph.D., President of the National Home Education Research Institute, reminds us that the main impetus of any struggle for the betterment of boys—and for education—is the removal of the state:

Dear Ilana,

Wow, well done in “Shafting boys” today on WND! Upon a first reading, I agree with the vast majority of what you wrote.
As a former boy, young man, public and private classroom teacher, professor of science, and professor of education and current researcher, I can say that your description and analysis presents one more argument that the state should have never been allowed into the private and philosophical realm of the education/indoctrination/discipleship of children. And it is a fine argument that every freedom lover and person who recognizes that there are natural differences between men and women, boys and girls, should urgently and rapidly move—and encourage others to do the same—to private, parent-led education/indoctrination/discipleship rather than allow the state to do so to their children.

Keep up the great work.

—Brian

This is not to say that schools free of federal interference would not have experimented with whole language and new math; or that countless private schools will not continue to replace Madison with Mumia Abu-Jamal and defer to Oprah’s book club for a literary canon. But competition will effect quick corrections in the market for education. Competition will ensure that the non-hierarchical, progressive, child-centered adulation currently posing as schooling is eclipsed, as paying parents patronize teachers who teach and schools that foster virtue, not vacuity. Staying stupid is a perfectly valid choice, so long as it’s not a government-enforced status quo.