November 12, 2012
News Clips
- UPS ends grants to Boy Scouts over discrimination
The philanthropic arm of shipping giant UPS said it will no longer give money to the Boy Scouts of America as long as the group discriminates against gays, the second major corporation to recently strip funding from the scouts. The UPS Foundation made the change Thursday after an online petition protesting its annual grants to the Boy Scouts attracted more than 80,000 signatures. UPS, based in Atlanta, follows computer chip maker Intel in withdrawing corporate support for the Boy Scouts.
Boston.com
November 12, 2012 - Intel will end support for Oregon Boy Scouts over Scouts’ policy on gays
Boy Scouts in Oregon have few benefactors more generous than Intel, which has awarded hundreds of thousands of dollars to Boy Scout troops and Cub Scout packs over the past few years.
The Oregonian
November 10, 2012 - The Educational Attainment of Girls and Boys: Two Sides of the Same Coin
How about a close look within this very area: The education of girls (and boys) in the U.S.? Stories about how girls have surpassed boys in educational attainment have become common, and are often linked to statements about how boys are forgotten and/or lost. This rhetoric is troubling for several reasons. First, it can be read to imply a zero-sum equation; that is, that the educational advancement of girls is the cause of boys’ educational neglect. Second, stories about girls’ “successes” and boys’ “failures” may obscure more than they reveal.
National Education Policy Center
November 8, 2012 - Sex education: giving straight answers without blushes
The questions postbox is the best device for providing the boys with the chance to ask whatever they want without fear or embarrassment. My promise is that I will give them a straight answer and I nearly always manage; if they ask, they probably need to know. We deal with the usual array of puberty questions. It is important to them to be normal. Predictably a common question is: “What is the average penis size for a 13 year old?” Sometimes this is expressed with more subtlety: “Is penis size an issue?”
The Guardian
November 7, 2012 - Boys’ Behavior May Be Programed By Fetal Testosterone, Study Finds
Testosterone levels during early fetal development might program certain behaviors later in life, according to a new study that found high levels of the sex hormone in the womb might boost boys’ impulsivity later on.
Huffington Post
November 6, 2012 - Many Smokers Light Up With Kids in Car: Study
Only one-quarter of smoking parents adopt a strict smoke-free car policy, and nearly half who don’t enforce such a ban light up while driving with their children, a new study indicates. Interviewing nearly 800 smoking parents, researchers also found that two out of three parents with strict smoke-free home policies don’t match that stance in their cars. Nearly three-quarters of smoking parents admitted that someone had smoked in their car in the last three months — suggesting parents don’t recognize the dangers of exposing their kids to tobacco residue in such a confined space.
HealthFinder.gov
November 12, 2012 - Suicidal Threads – Early Abuse Weaves it Ways into the Brain, with Potentially Tragic Consequences
From 1998 to 2008, the rate at which men in their mid 30s to mid 50s were committing suicide rose alarmingly fast, more quickly than the rate for the rest of Northern Ireland’s population. Tomlinson found a hint in the men’s past. They had all grown up in the late 1960s and 1970s, during some of the worst violence Northern Ireland had ever experienced.
Science News
November 3, 2012 - Preventive mental health care for children falls through the cracks
The current issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry has an excellent article, Integrating Mental Health Care Into Pediatric Primary Care Settings, identifying the causes of this problem.
Pediatric training provides limited experience in screening or intervening for mental disorders. In contrast, child psychiatry training emphasizes the treatment of children with established psychiatric diagnoses and typically offers limited experience with children at risk for mental disorders or children whose symptoms do not reach the threshold for diagnosis.
Boston.com
October 25, 2012
Opinion
- The Gender Double Standard: What Message Are We Sending Our Boys?
Where do you stand? Why is it OK for girls to be “tomboys” while boys are often ridiculed?
Huffington Post
November 5, 2012 - Can’t Guys Just Learn to Fight for a Friendship?
Men no longer know how to fight. Don’t get me wrong “” we know how to confront strangers when they cut in line at the butcher’s or block the door on the subway. What we don’t know how to do is have the kind of unpleasant talks that articulate feelings to real friends when those friends ignore our wives at a dinner, or don’t think to call us when we are fired. Instead, we either shrug off the slight or end the friendship.
New York Times
October 25, 2012
International News
JAMAICA
- Ganja causing boys to misbehave — Jamaica drug council
Eighty per cent of boys who have demonstrated behavioural problems in schools have reported cannabis use.
stabroeknews.com
November 9, 2012
LATIN AMERICA
- Latin American women: better educated, but still underpaid
Challenging the notion that parents tend to favor investing in boys’ education, the study found that Latin America has achieved gender parity — and in much of the region, the balance tips in favor of girls — in terms of schooling. However, even with an educational advantage, women are still mostly employed in lower-paid occupations in Latin America such as teaching, healthcare, or the service sector, like restaurants.
Christian Science Monitor
November 12, 2012
RUSSIA
- Why boys and girls should study separately
Long ago, in pre-Revolutionary Russia, all schools were divided by gender. However, the Bolsheviks abandoned this practice as a “relic of the past.” After World War II, there was an attempt to return to segregated classrooms, but it did not last for long. These days, segregated education is considered a facet of elite education — there is no coincidence that it is practiced in the most expensive private schools in Britain, Germany, Japan and the United States.
Now, thanks to Professor Bazarny’s research, a few schools in Russia have returned to this system. The results have been astounding, especially in cases where parallel and combined
classes have existed simultaneously — in other words, in cases where comparisons can be made.
Russia
November 5, 2012
SWEDEN
- Boys fall further behind girls in school: report
There is an increasing difference between the performance of girls and boys in Swedish schools, with girls pulling away from their male counterparts, according to new statistics published by the National Agency for Education (Skolverket).
The Local
November 8, 2012