One False Idea

I was listening to MPR the other day. "All Things Considered" had a bit on a non-profit group that was presenting an "opera" in Fargo, "One False Move".

The opera addressed female bullying.

"Ironic", I thought.

In the seventies and eighties, following on the heels of research that alleged that girls were short-changed in the educational system - that boys were called on more frequently in class and that young girls' psyches were brutalized by a masculist society - and that the education system needed to change. Girls needed to become more assertive; government programs sprang up to direct girls into math and science; the self-esteem of the nation's girls became a national priority among the professionally concerned.

On a more sinister tack, boys were regarded as the problem. Based on the research of the likes of Carol Gilligan and others, the education system made a priority out of changing boys - indeed, changing boyhood. Early childhood theorists prevailed on educators to try to make boys act more like girls, encouraging cooperative play and verbal games, punishing competition and rough-housing.

Of course, that research has been shown to be bsed on incredibly flawed "science" - indeed, to have been the result of research that relied on wholesale abrogation of the rules of academic research. Christine Hoff Summers' The War On Boys gutted Gilligan's body of research like a rotten fish...

...but it takes more than mere conclusive refutation to change the education system.

But that's not the point.

"One False Move" purports to relate the story of couple of girls, one-time best friends, whose friendship, and eventually lives, are ruined by the culture of petty, brutal bullying that is such a part of teenage girl life.

If the music I heard on ATC was any cue, the "opera" must be musically dreadful:

"Don't be caught stealing the limelight

If the limelight isn't yours, beware.

Don't admit you have a social conscience

If the others think it's cooler not to care.

Never state opinions of your own.

Never let on who you really are.

Never doubt that you could be alone

For the rest of your life

With an invisible scar

From that unplanned, unconscious one false move.'

This could be considered a form of bullying in its own right.

But I got to thinking - what happened the last time we got concerned with how our kids grow up?

Twenty years ago, the Department of Education bought into the notion that girls are short-changed by schools, based on flawed research including Gilligan's. Today, girls are a majority of college students in most fields (except in science and technology) and in absolute numbers. Worse - boyhood, or at least the outward manifestations of boyhood, competition and roughhousing and boisterousness, have been banned from schools and turned into minor aberrations.

So what happens if the professionally concerned take on female bullying? We'll end up with gangs of gun-toting girls terrorizing the schools...

Is this actually an issue? How much consciousness do we need to raise, here?

Posted by Mitch at February 4, 2005 05:56 AM | TrackBack