Raving Idiot Sues for Preferential Treatment for Boys, A'cos Grrls Just Do Better and It Aren't Fair nope nope Not Fair At All... I was alerted to this foolishness by an entry at Pinko Feminist Hellcat:

The Boston Globe reports that a 17-year-old male student has filed an anti-discrimination lawsuit claiming that girls do better at his school than boys because the system is biased in their favour, against boys.

Doug Anglin, a senior at Milton High School, filed the suit, which claims, in part:

Girls are outperforming boys because the school system favors them, said Anglin, who has filed a federal civil rights complaint contending that his school discriminates against boys.

Among Anglin's allegations: Girls face fewer restrictions from teachers, like being able to wander the hallways without passes, and girls are rewarded for abiding by the rules, while boys' more rebellious ways are punished.

Whoa. I like that. "I'm suing you to make you give me better grades than I earn because I'm a rebellious troglojock (thank you, Brooke McEldowney) who just can't help it or control my impulses."

Grading on homework, which sometimes includes points for decorating a notebook, also favor girls, according to Anglin's complaint, filed last month with the US Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights.

...

Anglin, a soccer and baseball player who wants to go to the College of the Holy Cross, said he brought the complaint in hope that the Education Department would issue national guidelines on how to boost boys' academic achievement.

Research has found that boys nationwide are increasingly falling behind girls, especially in reading and writing, and that they are more likely to be suspended, according to a 2005 report by the Educational Equity Center of the Academy for Educational Development, an international nonprofit group with headquarters in Washington, D.C.

School oficials denied that boys aren't treated as well as girls... But the female Student Body President "voiced support for Anglin's views."

[Principal John] Drottar said the high school plans to reinstitute a mentoring program that will pair low-achieving students with teachers.

While it will not specifically recruit male students, boys are likely to make up a large portion of the students served, he said.

No. D'ya think?

Anglin -- whose complaint was written by his father, who is a lawyer in Boston -- is looking for broader changes. He says that teachers must change their attitudes toward boys and look past boys' poor work habits or rule-breaking to find ways to encourage them academically.

Dude's father has got to be a PI lawyer -- an ambulance-chaser -- "Nothing is ever my fault. It's all the soft-drink company's fault because they didn't put a warning saying to not use Vicegrips™ to try to open the bottle..." If your son's not doing well in school, it must be the fault of the school. Sue the bastards.

The school should also recruit more male teachers to better motivate boys, Anglin said. At the high school, 64 percent of the teachers are women, and 36 percent are men, according to the school system.

Wow. Really? I graduated high school in 1967, and i'm fairly sure that the only male teachers i had were in gym class. Thirty-six per cent male teachers is a pretty big change from my recollections.

[Anglin] proposes that the high school give students credit for playing sports, not just for art and drama courses. He also urges that students be allowed to take classes on a pass/fail basis to encourage more boys to enroll in advanced classes without risking their grade point average.

Now that one i could almost agree with. Almost. But i guarantee you that the majority of students who aren't taking advanced classes under the current setup still wouldn't under that system.

He also wants the school to abolish its community service requirement, saying it's another burden that will just set off resistance from boys, who may skip it and fail to graduate as a result.

You know how little sympathy i have for that? None. Less than none.

Rule Number 42, the Oldest Rule in the Book: If you can't do the time, don't do the crime.

If you haven't learnt that by high school, you deserve whatever you get.

I speak from personal and family experiences. I wound up repeating tenth grade due to flunking English -- despite maxed out scores on the SAT verbals, a mother who was an English teacher, and a grasp of the subject that sometimes allowed me to {with great joy} correct the teacher. And "A"s in Advanced English the next year (at another school).

Why did i fail English? Because i hated the teacher's guts, thought she was a total loser, and made it plain what i thought almost from Day One, taking great pleasure in goading her into losing her temper on an almost-daily basis, and refusing to do any homework that didn't interest me.

So i got what i had coming to me, what revolutionaries who lose always get. I got the chop.

About the only thing the experience did for me over all was to leave me with more than a lttle sympathy for Malcolm MacDowell's character in if...

Anglin, who has a 2.88 grade point average, acknowledged that discrimination complaints are not often filed by white, middle-class males like himself.

But he said: ''I'm not here to try to lower the rights of women or interfere with the rights of minorities. We just want to fix this one problem that we think is a big deal."

Gerry Anglin, Doug Anglin's father, said the school system should compensate boys for the discrimination by boosting their grades retroactively.

Right. The way to help someone defeat a self-destructive behaviour is to become an enabler.

Back when "affirmative action" (which concept, i must say, i never particularly approved of) was the reason that white males weren't as successful as they thought they ought to be, the argument was advanced that if, say, a medical school preferentially admitted people who were technically slightly less than qualified to people who happened to be white males who were marginally qualified, there was a risk that the school might then produce doctors who were also less than qualified.

One would be willing to make odds on the proposition of what a Boston attorney's position on that would be...

(As Ring Lardner [i think] said "The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but that's the way to bet."

Well, guess what -- this kid's suit is essentially admitting that males are academically inferior to females and asking for a free ride, just like affirmative action -- according to the white males, anyway -- gave to minorities.

"Two weaks ago I cudn't spel 'minoraty' and now i are wun."

Give up kid -- you got a 2.88 GPA, and, even if your school artificially raises it, you still probably ain't gonna get into Holy Cross, 'cos they're gonna know your GPA is on steroids. In fact, all students from schools or school systems known to engage in grade inflation are going to have a harder time getting into good colleges, 'cos the Admissions Office is going to look closer at them.

Gerry Anglin said. "Most of these kids want to go to college, so these records are important to them."

And do you really think the colleges won't know that the grades have been pumped full of hot air, that the butcher's thumb was on the scale?

Phooie, i say, or something like it.  ¶ 12:34 AM