- 2 Nephi 13:16-24…Moreover, the Lord saith: Because the daughters of Zion are haughty and walk with stretched-forth necks and wanton eyes, walking and mincing as they go, and making a tinkling with their feet— Therefore the Lord will smite with a scab the crown of the head of the daughters of Zion, and the Lord will discover their secret parts. In that day the Lord will take away the bravery of their tinkling ornaments, and cauls, and round tires like the moon; The chains and the bracelets, and the mufflers; The bonnets, and the ornaments of the legs, and the headbands, and the tablets, and the ear-rings; The rings, and nose jewels; The changeable suits of apparel, and the mantles, and the wimples, and the crisping-pins; The glasses, and the fine linen, and hoods, and the veils. And it shall come to pass, instead of sweet smell there shall be stink; and instead of a girdle, a rent; and instead of well-set hair, baldness; and instead of a stomacher, a girding of sackcloth; burning instead of beauty.
- “When these tests were first conducted thirty years ago, there was a substantial gender gap in the results, with boys outperforming girls. When the researchers repeated the tests in 2005, they found that the gender gap had vanished. The gap didn’t disappear because the girls were doing better. These researchers found that girls are not doing better; in fact, the performance of eleven- and twelve-year-old girls in 2005 had deteriorated slightly in comparison with the performance of eleven- and twelve-year-old girls thirty years ago. Instead, they found that the boys’ performance in 2005 was dramatically worse than it had been thirty years ago. “This is a huge and significant statistical change,” concluded Professor Shayer. Boys who are nearly twelve years old “are doing [only] as well as the eight- to nine-year-olds in 1976,” he observed. Why the drop? Professor Shayer suggested that “the most likely reasons are the lack of experiential play [Kenntnis] in primary schools, and the growth of a video-game, TV culture. Both take away the kind of hands-on play that allows kids to experience how the world works in practice.” Boys Adrift: The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men (Leonard Sax) Page 65
- “And what about preparing for the real world? In the real world—unless you’re a fighter pilot or a Marine sniper—being able to push a button 0.02 seconds faster than the other guy isn’t such a valuable skill. Preparing teenagers for the demands of real-life requires skills quite different from the cognitive and vasomotor skills required to master video games. Imagine a young father, in his twenties let’s say, trying to comfort his crying baby daughter. There are no buttons to push, no photon torpedoes to fire. The right thing to do may be simply to rock the baby and hum a lullaby. The chief virtue required may not be lightning virtuosity with a game controller, but merely—patience. If you need to get along with a belligerent coworker, the chief virtue you need may not be lightning speed. In most video games, the best way to deal with difficult people is to vaporize them with photon torpedoes. In the real world, what you need is not high-tech virtual weaponry, but patience.” Boys Adrift: The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men (Leonard Sax) Page 66
- “Boys prefer video games over girls? In the summer and fall of 2006, the New York Times published a series of front-page articles entitled “The New Gender Divide.” One of these described how many young men seem more interested in playing their video games than in being with their girlfriends. The reporter interviewed one young woman at college who had broken off her relationship with a young man, “in part out of frustration over his playing video games four hours a day. ‘He said he was thinking of trying to cut back to fifteen hours a week,’ she said. ‘I said, “Fifteen hours is what I spend on my internship, and I get paid $1,300 a month. That’s my litmus test now: I won’t date anyone who plays video games. It means they’re choosing to do something that wastes their time and sucks the life out of them.’” Boys Adrift: The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men (Leonard Sax) Page 70
- “I won’t flirt with the darkness I am here to fight. I am a daughter of God, and I am holding on to virtue. I am confident in my divinity. You’ll find me on my Father’s side, no matter what the world may do.” From the Song “Virtue” by Jenny Phillips/ Tyler Castleton.
- “Some of us remember David as a shepherd boy divinely commissioned by the Lord through the prophet Samuel. Others of us know him as a mighty warrior; for doesn’t the record show the chant of the adoring women following his many victorious battles, “Saul hath slain his thousands, and David his ten thousand”? Or perhaps we look upon him as the inspired poet or as one of Israel’s greatest kings. Still, others recall that he violated the laws of God and took that which belonged to another—the beautiful Bathsheba. He even arranged the death of her husband, Uriah. I, however, like to think of David as the righteous lad who had the courage and the faith to face insurmountable odds when all others hesitated, and to redeem the name of Israel by facing that giant in his life—Goliath of Gath.” Meeting Your Goliath (Thomas S. Monson) Kindle Loc. 40-45
- “…There are more outstanding young men and women among our people at present than at any other moment in my lifetime.” (James E. Faust, Ensign, Nov. 1990, 32)
- “A smaller and smaller proportion of boys are going on to college. Right now, the student body at the average university in the United States is 58 percent female, 42 percent male (with similar numbers in Canada and Australia).3 And going to college doesn’t guarantee any positive result, particularly for boys. In fact, college is where the gender gap in motivation really shows up. Most girls who enroll in a four-year college will eventually earn a degree. Most boys won’t.” Boys Adrift: The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men (Leonard Sax) Page 8
- “Here are the numbers for the male proportion of students enrolled in four-year colleges and universities in the United States, 1949-2006: 1949: 70 percent of undergraduate students were male 1959: 64 percent were male 1969: 59 percent were male 1979: 49 percent were male 1989: 46 percent were male 1999: 44 percent were male 2006: 42 percent were male.” Boys Adrift: The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men (Leonard Sax) Page 8
- “Girls are more likely to affiliate with the adults. They are more likely to share common aims and values with the grown-ups. Boys and young men, on the other hand, are less likely to be sympathetic to adult aims and values and are more inclined to engage in delinquent behaviors such as smashing mailboxes, street racing, mooning police officers, among others, than girls are. A boy who smashes mailboxes “just for the fun of it” will raise his status in the eyes of at least some other boys. A girl who smashes mailboxes just for the fun of it is unlikely to raise her status in the eyes of most of the other girls. Girls are more likely to listen to what the grown-ups are saying and to do what the grown-ups ask, particularly if there are no boys around. (If boys are around, some girls become more likely to misbehave, perhaps because they perceive that disrespecting the adults will raise your status in the eyes of at least some of the boys.” Boys Adrift: The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men (Leonard Sax) Page 25
- “It’s easy to see how these sex differences are relevant to education. Girls will do the homework because the teacher asked them to. Boys are more likely to do the homework only if it interests them. If it bores them, or if they think it’s “stupid,” they are more likely to ignore it. Researchers have consistently found that girls are significantly more likely than boys to do the assigned homework, in every subject. Even the highest-achieving boys are significantly less likely to do the homework than the comparably achieving girls. Girls at every age get better grades in school than boys do, in every subject—not because girls are smarter, researchers have found, but because girls try harder. Most girls would like to please the teacher, if possible. Most boys don’t care much about pleasing the teacher or about getting straight A’s—and boys who do try to please the teacher and who do care about their grades will lower their status in the eyes of the other boys. Girls are more likely to assess their work as their teachers do. Boys are less likely to care what the teacher thinks of their work. That divergence leads to an enduring paradox: at every age, girls do better in school, but are less satisfied with their achievements, compared with the boys. In 2006, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania reported that girls’ greater self-discipline and self-control—perhaps deriving from their greater motivation to please the teacher—appears to be a key distinguishing factor that has enabled girls to survive and thrive in the accelerated world of twenty-first-century education.” Boys Adrift: The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men (Leonard Sax) Page 26
- “Nature is about smelling, hearing, tasting,” Louv reminds us. The end result of childhood with more time spent in front of computer screens than outdoors is what Louv calls “cultural autism. The symptoms? Tunneled senses, and feelings of isolation and containment . . . [and] a wired, know-it-all state of mind. That which cannot be Googled does not count.” Boys Adrift: The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men (Leonard Sax) Page 30
- “The first thing that happens when you ask kids to do stuff they have no interest in doing is they stop paying attention.” Boys Adrift: The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men (Leonard Sax) Page 34
- “The second thing that happens when you ask kids to do stuff they have no interest in doing is they get annoyed. They get irritable. They withdraw.” Boys Adrift: The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men (Leonard Sax) Page 35.
- “For girls and for many women, if you believe you’re smart, you’ll actually be smarter—you’ll learn better and do better on tests—than if you think you’re dumb. A girl who thinks she’s good in math will test better than a girl of the same ability who thinks she’s bad in math.” Boys Adrift: The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men (Leonard Sax) Page 49