The descent of men

What is manliness? It seems that this is a question alot of me nare asking themselves according to 'The descentof men' by Dan Kindlon. Kindlon has done studies on the attitudes of adolescent girls and boys in today society and one thing is very clear. A boy's view on what is 'manly' will be drastically changing in the next decades. A higher emphasis will be placed on being a good and attentive father, spending more or almost all their thime with their children by becoming stay at home dads (Kindlon 624-625).

Because educated women have began to hold and be placed in jobs that were formerly mostly taken  by men in the past many men are finding new ways to go through life, some take the easy way out and others egarly welcome the role of care-taker to their home and children when in the past this may have meant 'failure' in everyday life or loss of manly pride.

Even in our own college we are 70% female. Women are taking up most spaces in college education and complete these educations with higher degrees then their male counterparts. Girls in todays society are encouraged to be vibrant and well educated. It remains to see if Kindlon's predictions will be true, but all I can say is Kindlon's future doesn't seem to bad.

In "the Lesson" It is pointed out that though we are born into poor or lower middle class families there is always a way that we can better inprove ourselves if we decide to. Sometimes we as people find it easier to stay or become more ignorant to the better paths around us because they may take more work. As a society we are very lazy; education, and opportunity for a better life are regularly offered or forced into our hands. Yet because of either our own ignorance or laziness we forcefully throw these opportunities away.

In "Learning to read" Malcolm X took int upon himself in prisonv to teach himself how to better read and write in order to be able to have a more influencial place in society (Malcolm X 211). Most of us in today's society would not even think of teaching our selves to read because we have been taught to read since a young age. We don't even spare a thought to learning to read better once we have the basic skill under our belts.

Often when reading during class people will give up on pronouncing certain long or complicated words and leave it to their peers to fill in the words for them. These pronounciations are readily available in a dictory, but because of our belief that if we have the basic skills most of us do not even know where theirs is, or don't even have one, and have never picked on up in their lives. This is what Malcolm X did automatically seeking this helpful resource copying and reading it aloud to himself in order to learn proper pronounciations (Malcolm X 211).

School also do not push the importance of proper pronounciation after the ages when most learn to read. It seems that most teacher except that some students read well and others just do not and there is no helping them. They do not offer any help for these students, and if a student does desire help they must seek an outside learning center. These centers can be expensive and because of a stigma relating to being seen as 'slow' if you get help for a lack of skills in not only reading but many other subjects reading falls to the side. Most students will even say they 'hate' to read, or dread reading.

To summarize there needs to be a renaissance in todays culture, this movement needs to lead to a resurgence of the want of learning. Schools need to put a renewed focus on reading even in high school. So that the lazy students of todays america will no longer have a social stigma against being too 'stupid' to attend college.

Truthfully In reading the story becoming members of society as soon as I began reading I began to dissagree with things that were said, it's probably because of my conservative values, which though I have started to become more open minded still remain. Eighteen years of being taught something and having it enforced and reiterated by attending church regularly have lead me to strongly dissagree with the thoughts of this article.

By the end of the fist section I had put the book down. Because of this and because I know my opinions will be looked down upon in class I will probably not talk alot. As a person my personality is one that prefers not to start fights intentionally. I'd like to be able to argue my point strongly but I feel like my biggest source for my arguement would be the bible and to most people that would automatically make my arguement false since they believe that the things that I believe in are just stories.

I don't really believe that there can be such a thing third gender or that people can switch back and forth between genders as easily as changing their attitudes and clothes. It is really times like this that make me wish I owned and apologetics bible which I could read in order to gain information to form a proper argument. As a person i've always thought of myself as female and don't really have any experience with people like the ones mentioned in the first part so maybe I am being close minded but this is just my opinion on the subject and it always subject to change.