Another mistake many make when analyzing this matter is to assume that "feminizing" curricula helps girls. This falsehood carries weight because, first, since they are doing better than boys, it's easy to believe all is well, but this is no different than thinking that there is no problem with chastity among whites because their 27 percent out-of-wedlock birth rate looks good next to the blacks' 70 percent. Then, some will say that girls don't seem to be doing worse than their grandmothers in terms of grades and test scores, but this misses an important point.

We are not judging the generations with the same yardstick because tests and curricula have been so dumbed-down. Blame this on political correctness, which has both demanded laxity so that failure will be minimized and made laxity necessary because, since it has eliminated accountability, and hence obedience, it's impossible to teach students effectively (how can someone learn from you if he will not first listen to you?) A multitude of studies have borne this out, by the way, revealing how little many high school and college students actually know.

Does this really surprise anyone? A quarter of a century ago I attended one of the best high schools in the nation, and, while I was a slacker (I'm chagrinned to admit) and didn't mind the lack of discipline, I full well knew even as a teen that my schooling was a cakewalk compared to that of earlier generations - and yes, that cake does now have frilly, pink decoration on top, but again, of what good is this? I remember reading about a school that was offering extra credit if its teen students decorated their notebooks — a feminine exercise if ever there was one — but while girls certainly will get better grades if that reflects the curriculum's character, what is actually learned? Unless it's a class in interior design, it has no value.

Casting feminized curricula as beneficial to girls creates numerous problems. First, inherent in the notion is that one sex can only be helped in a coed environment at the expense of the other; if you give boys their blue, girls cannot have their pink. This is a flawed analysis, and if we make an incorrect diagnosis, we can't prescribe the correct cure. Moreover, it lends the dumbed-down, emotion-based, untraditional education paradigm of the left credibility it doesn't deserve. It's not so much that we need to tweak the system for boys or provide them a parallel one - we need to pull it up by the roots and reclaim tradition. Lastly, the idea that it's either blue or pink and ne'er the twain shall meet creates a battle of the sexes, causing opposition to the cure that, in a measure, wouldn't exist otherwise.