Thursday, December 13, 2007

New Book - Boys Adrift


Here is the summary of this book. Please read it with care and a critical eye! Do you agree? Is what Dr Sax says plausable? ( The following summary was copied from (https://www.lib.uwo.ca/blogs/education/2007/09/new_book_boys_adrift_the_five.html )
New Book: Boys Adrift: The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men


Family physician, research psychologist, and acclaimed author of Why Gender Matters, Leonard Sax reveals the truth about what's driving the decline of American boys--and what parents can do about it. The call number for Boys Adrift is LC1390.S29x 2007 .


Something scary is happening to boys today.
From kindergarten to college, they are less resilient and less ambitious than they were a mere twenty years ago.
As for young men, it turns out the film Failure to Launch is not far from the truth.
Fully one-third of men ages 22-34 are still living at home with their parents--about a 100 percent increase in the past twenty years.


Boys nationwide are increasingly dropping out of school; fewer are going to college; and for the first time in American history, women are outnumbering men at undergraduate institutions three to two.


Parents, teachers, and mental health professionals are worried about boys.
But until now, no one has come up with good reasons for their decline--and, more important, with workable solutions to reverse this troubling trend.


Now, family physician and research psychologist Dr. Leonard Sax delves into the scientific literature and draws on his vast clinical experience to propose an entirely original view of why boys and young men are failing in school and at home.


He argues that a combination of social, cultural, and biological factors is creating an environment that is literally toxic to boys, ranging from environmental estrogens to the over-prescription of ADHD drugs. And he presents practical solutions--from new ways of controlling boys' use of video games, to innovative (and workable) education reforms. ( the 5 factors are: 1) feminization of education; (2) video games; (3) increased prescription of psychotropic medications that affect the motivational systems of the brain; (4) exposure to endocrine disrupters; and (5) lack of heroic role models.


About the AuthorLeonard Sax, M.D., Ph.D., is a family physician, research psychologist, and acclaimed author of Why Gender Matters. He is founder and executive director of the National Association for Single Sex Public Education in Montgomery County, Maryland (NASSPE). Dr. Sax's scholarly work has been published in a wide variety of prestigious journals, including American Psychologist, Behavioral Neuroscience, and Journal of the American Medical Association. He is a popular speaker and has been a featured guest on CNN, PBS, Fox News, NPR's "Talk of the Nation," "The Today Show," and many other programs. He lives in Montgomery County, Maryland.

In the review of this book in the journal JAMA - The Journal of the American Medical Association Maureen E. Lyon, PhD, Reviewer Center for Cancer and Immunology Research Division of Adolescent and Young Adult Medicine Children's National Medical Center George Washington University School of Medicine Washington, DC

States that:

" Boys Adrift is at its strongest in providing practical advice to parents about how to increase their sons' academic motivation; how to set appropriate limits on video game use; and how to protect their sons from the potential harm of psychotropic medications and environmental estrogens. Boys Adrift is at its weakest in supporting the thesis that there is an epidemic of unmotivated and underachieving young men".

GO on : search the internet - find out more - get a copy: Find out if you think we have an 'epidemic' on our hands. What are your thoughts about the young men that you work with??

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