|
March-April 2008
|
< previous | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 When it comes to ambition, boys and young men are in a uniquely difficult position. The “girls’ movement” grew out of the women’s movement. Today, mothers and fathers can enjoy their daughters’ achievements. But with a generation of women excited by the success of girls and young women, and men who never themselves experienced gender discrimination, boys are left in the lurch. Girls didn’t start the girls’ movement; women (and many men) did. Boys, sitting in front of Grand Theft Auto, aren’t about to say, “Enough!” Adults have to encourage them the way we encouraged our daughters. Mark A. Sherman, Ph.D. ’69 “Girl power” overall painted a well-rounded picture of the strengths and challenges of what it means to be female in today’s world, but I do have to take issue with the contention that unwanted pregnancy is no longer a factor in girls’ lives. How ironic to read that “For the first time in history, females have complete fertility control, which means they aren’t getting pregnant, dropping out, having babies,” only weeks after the United States learned that our teen birth rate increased in 2006 for the first time in 14 years. Unfortunately, unintended pregnancy still presents many young women with an enormous challenge. The United States has one of the highest teen pregnancy rates in the industrialized world. Pregnancy and parenting obligations are leading causes of dropout for high-school girls, and only a third of teen moms finish high school. “Complete fertility control” is not yet a reality, least of all to the two million women who face an unintended pregnancy each year. Erica A. Fletcher, Ed.M. ’04 As the father of two daughters, I enjoyed Hodder’s article. But the author’s description of “Title IX of the 1972 Educational Amendments to the 1964 Civil Rights Act” needs to be corrected. Title IX is in fact part of the 1972 Educational Amendments to the Higher Education Act of 1965. Donald E. Heller, Ed.M. ’92, Ed.D. ’97 There is a wonderfully ambiguous sentence near the bottom of page 37: “[B]oys… spend less time on schoolwork than girls.” Indeed, I knew a number of boys who spent more time on girls than on schoolwork! David Owens ’61 WAR AND SUFFERINGWhile the excerpt from Drew Gilpin Faust’s This Republic of Suffering (January-February, page 44) makes for a fascinating and profoundly moving read, I question some of the parallels between that era and ours drawn explicitly by the editors and implied by Faust. Today we are a nation rather divided than united by suffering, with the majority of enlistments—and therefore deaths and disfigurements, and other damages to body and soul—borne by a small percentage of American families. I was disappointed to find the last word in the piece given to the “elegiac” view of the Civil War voiced by Ambrose Bierce and Oliver Wendell Holmes. The outcome of the Civil War transcended the individual motives of the men who fought for either side: it brought an end to slavery and kept our nation from being torn in two. The purpose of today’s conflict is nowhere near so clear. I suspect that a century from now thoughts of those fallen in Iraq will bring to mind lines from a different poet about a different war—Rudyard Kipling’s wrenching confession after his son’s death in 1915 at the Battle of Loos: “If any question why we died/Tell them, because our fathers lied.” Cassandra Nelson 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | continued >  
 
 
|
