Why Boys Need Mentors
I could provide statistics on educational trends, decreasing high school graduation rates, declining numbers in college attendance and graduation, or psychological aggression and behavior issues, but that would be avoiding telling the story. Though these numbers can illustrate issues among young males, they do so from too wide of a perspective. Data, when describing people, can often dehumanize them.
Over the years of working with adolescents, I learned through experience, the many differences between boys and girls; the way in which psychology manifested into behavior and performance, and ultimately into outcomes.
On average, the disparity between girls and boys is pronounced— girls provide far more to work with: better dialogue, deeper insights, greater effort, longer-term vision. As a coach and advisor, that is everything I can ask for. It’s no problem if a girl is struggling in the classroom or outside of it, because I can remedy those issues through the partnership I have with that student. When they’re struggling, they’re far more likely to tell you they are.
Boys on the other hand lock up. They provide very little information and are reluctant and unsure of what to even say. While girls often have too much going on mentally, boys seemingly have too little. But do they?
I think the answer is mixed. Part of it is that they do have less going on upstairs than girls— less rumination, worry, thoughts, feelings— but that they also don’t have the tools to know how to navigate the thoughts and feelings they do have, or when they do, how to articulate them. As a result, you get very short answers full of “um’s” and “I don’t know’s” when asking questions needing insight, reflection or introspection.
All of this has led to a syndrome I refer to as “male numbness.” It is the result of an individual shut down due to confused thoughts and feelings, and the inability to navigate or articulate them. After all, how can you describe what you feeling when you’re not sure what you’re feeling?
The reason why this disparity exists is based on many factors— environmental, social, political, educational, and domestic— but the fact remains that the disparity exists and is troubling.
Chestnut State is aimed at working with boys, particularly in middle school, to not only coach them regarding their feelings, as well as address the abovementioned factors that contribute to them, but first help them understand what those feelings are. Furthermore, before those feelings even become front and center and therefore to be addressed and dealt with, we position the child in a growth mindset through a dynamic of mentorship.
By building a partnership with boys ages 12-14 and onwards, we are able to provide mentorship through dialogue and discussion, build curiosity (that was most likely there before they entered this phase), engage creativity and wonderment in the world through academic exploration, and more. By the time the student is a sophomore or junior in high school, they will have had several years worth of mentorship and thereby a level psycho-social and emotional growth and development, and are in a position to not only navigate and articulate their thoughts and feelings, but address them properly.
