Colleges and schools at every level are becoming feminized, said Peg Tyre, author of the best-selling book "The Trouble With Boys," in a speech at UF on Tuesday.
Tyre, a former Newsweek investigative journalist, wrote about education issues for seven years at the magazine. She spoke to a crowd of about 30 people at Norman Hall as part of a panel that addressed issues facing boys in education.
In her speech, Tyre said 57 percent of college undergraduates in the U.S. are women. Almost 54 percent of UF's fall 2007 enrollment was female, according to UF records.
She said the problem is that boys are leaking from the education pipeline. From preschool to high school, more boys are dropping out, doing poorly and being diagnosed with behavioral problems such as Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, she said.
Boys need to be able to run around and read "swashbuckling" action books, but schools are instead cutting recess and female teachers are assigning books that boys aren't interested in, she said.
In an interview before her speech, she said the problem doesn't stop when boys get to college.
"Boys study less; they do less homework; they spend more time playing video games and at the gym; they get lower GPAs than girls; they drop out at greater rates," she said.
She said to get boys more interested in school, big changes need to happen in the education system.
When she was growing up, she said, girls were encouraged by society to focus more on education, and it worked. Now that the tables have turned, something similar should happen with boys, she said.
"Boys need their own revolution," she said, "a 'menaissance.'"
Tyre said one problem facing males is that their brains don't mature until they're about 25. Female brains mature at about 16, she said.
Tyre said another problem is that parents and schools have been pushing children too early.
"We spend a lot of time turning our young people into commodities for college admission purposes," she said. "And maybe we've pushed up against the limits of human development."
