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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 29, 2024

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Old schools were designed to be "anti-boy." My dad was a headmaster in one, who do you think most of their discipline was aimed at? How many boys did he literally beat obedience into with a belt and paddle?

The problem does not appear to be that modern schools are anti-boy, more than they are not policing boyish behaviour enough.

Your theory is there is increased levels of unpoliced physical play in schools in 2024 compared to 1990?

Yes. In that teachers are not allowed to actually discipline or police children effectively nowadays.

So all activity is non-policed.

Perhaps at the degenerate schools. At the schools where most mid-high achieving students will attend there is vigorous policing. Anti-bullying investigations by schools are expansive and go off campus. Recreation is heavily policed with things like dodgeball, football, etc banned during recess and PE.

At the schools where most mid-high achieving students will attend there is vigorous policing

No there is not, that is my point. There is little to no actual punishment for students. Suspension and expulsion and investigations are not real punishments that channel male aggressive behaviors constructively. Unless either the teachers or parents are giving actual punishments that kids care about, then that is not policing. Teachers are not allowed to, and most parents do not seem to want to.

Then because you cannot actually correct behaviour, you ban the things that might lead to it. That isn't policing. it is ducking the problem entirely.

And yet there is no football and dodgeball, there are no dweebs in lockers and no fights at the bike rack. So the deterrence of masculine activity is effective against boys with even moderate levels of respect for authority. That hypothetically if you put some corner boys from Baltimore in said school they would be allowed to smoke crack in class while stomping on their desk doesn't mean anything. We dont care about the corner boys on the side of the bell curve we are talking about.

And yet there is no football and dodgeball, there are no dweebs in lockers and no fights at the bike rack.

There are all of those things in my kids school. What they don't do is really enforce respect for authority.

Then your kids school is better than most WRT enabling male flourishing, but needs to shape up on the militarism aspects.

Most schools do not allow any sort of physicality outside of organized sports. And even then, often it is wrestling and related sports that get cut first.

Organized sports is probably the best way to be fair. As long as you ket your coaches actually enforce discipline.

But every school I know seems to be similar.