Having said this, there is no doubt that a departure from traditional schooling, which today means the subordination of logic, objective truth, and hard facts to feel-good schemes (e.g., self-esteem nonsense), is more unpalatable to boys. As Oprah Winfrey's show proves, the fairer sex has a great affinity for encounter-group settings, whereas boys are more likely to say "This makes no sense, is bunk, and I'm not doing it!" However, echoing earlier points, just because kids — in this case girls — may like something doesn't mean it's good for them.

As for the boys, while I can certainly sympathize with notebook-decoration overload, the solution is not to say we understand why they're goofing off. After all, no matter how sane the schooling, it's always more fun to be the grasshopper than the ant. So we have two obligations. First, to secure a disciplined environment in which exists that prerequisite for learning: obedience. Then, we have a duty to ensure that the system is worth being obedient to.

Thus, it's tragic when the prescription for boys' woes is to allow them freer reign, for this is precisely the opposite of what they need. In point of fact, boys would be far better off in a militaristic atmosphere, an environment with well-defined hierarchies, where following directions and applying oneself are viewed as a matter of duty and honor, as the exhibition of manly virtue. It is this, immersion in a masculine environment and an appeal to their masculinity, which will inspire them to greatness. It would work today just as it always has, and it has always worked; that is what history teaches. If we cannot even learn and apply the simplest lessons of the past, how can we expect our children to learn their lessons in the present?