As Bettina Arndt and Christina Hoff-Summers are pointing out — to the screeching fury of triggered feminist frightbats everywhere — the education is systematically failing boys. Read that sentence properly: it’s the system which is failing boys. Boys might be failing schools in ever-increasing numbers, but that’s because they’re being set up to fail.
For nearly half a century, the ruling mania of education bureaucracy and feminist dogma (increasingly, a tautology) has been specialty programs for girls. But why are they even needed, now that girls are undeniably trouncing boys, across every level of education?
Because, as the mask occasionally slips, it’s not about equity: it’s about revenge.
Boys are being punished for the sins, real or imagined, of their grandfathers, or even more distant ancestors. Or, more likely, the sins of the fathers of generations of feminists with Daddy issues.
But if feminists hate boys in general, there’s one group of boys they hate with absolute, spittle-flecked, unhinged fury: White boys.
The feminist education bureaucracry loves to waffle piously about the “under-representation of disadvantaged students” at universities. The only problem is, they’re lying through their teeth about who’s being disadvantaged. It’s not girls or minorities — it’s working-class white males.
In Britain, Chinese pupils in the lowest socio-economic quintile are 10% more likely to go to university than white British pupils in the highest quintile. White males in the lowest quintile are 10% less likely to be in higher education than any other group.
Overall, 20 per cent of British students at UK universities are BME (black or minority ethnic), which is significantly higher than the percentage of the population that’s BME — 13 per cent, according to the 2011 Census.
Try going to any university and finding a working-class white male. Even in courses like AgSci, most participants are from asset-wealthy farming families.
As for the elite universities…
There’s no evidence that BME students are under-represented among the 10 per cent of British Oxford undergraduates from the most disadvantaged households. On the contrary, they’re over-represented. It’s white boys from these households who are almost unheard of at Oxford.
The same is true of Cambridge. I appeared on Channel 4 News earlier this week to discuss this issue and a Cambridge graduate called Tony emailed me to say that in the three years he spent there, he never met a single white working-class student. ‘I am from Bermondsey and I never met one student at Cambridge who was authentically working class,’ he wrote. That’s anecdotal, but it’s borne out by other stories I’ve been told by the handful of white working-class boys who’ve made it to Oxbridge.
This is just the peak outcome of a lifetime of disadvantage being meted out to white, working-class males.
According to a report published [in 2015] by the Equalities and Human Rights Commission, poor white boys are the lowest-achieving group in Britain, with just 28 per cent getting five GCSEs at grade C or above, including English and maths, in 2013. That was lower than poor Pakistani boys and poor black Caribbean boys (who were, until recently, the worst performers). By contrast, 74 per cent of Chinese boys on free school meals hit that target, and poor Chinese girls are the highest-achieving group in Britain.
The Spectator
When former British PM David Cameron talked about “ingrained, institutional and insidious” attitudes driving inequalities at British universities, he was talking about alleged racism directed at non-whites. There’s a pervasive racist, classist attitude driving growing inequality, certainly, but it’s the only bigotry permitted by the “progressive” elite: the pure, undisguised hatred of the white, working-class male.
