Danny's Men's Studies

"Stop feminising our schools - our boys are suffering" is a great article on how bad schools have become into feminizing the whole educational experience. And the problems in school are much the same as problems at church:

• Instead of the make-or-break sprint to the exam deadline, boys have to endure stultifying coursework.
  
• the boys like taking risks - ending either in glorious triumph or disaster. The girls tend to play it safer.
• today's curriculum is pretty risk-proof. This is at its most obvious in science, where actual experiments with real flames and real blood have been replaced by facts on paper or video demonstrations.
• Essays are now so safe they can practically be marked by computer.

So: Answers are almost provided, no real world interaction, no competition and no challenge. Does this sound like your typical Sunday school? I volunteered in various age group Sunday schools and, looking back, none of them were boys friendly at all.

I love the following quote:

Their testosterone and its companion competitive streak need to be acknowledged. If they're ignored, boys get listless and they start retreating into their hoodies and terrorising the rest of us.

And to think that Jesus Christ called these "boys" (hoodies and terror-makers) into Christian leaders. The kind of young men that today's "Christian" leaders would turn their nose away from -- much like the Pharisees and Sadducees of Jesus' days? Hmm....

And these young men, without manly leaders, always end up with:

Eventually, they spend their time brawling, picking up ASBOs instead of A-levels.

[Or drop out and join a gang.] When it comes to church, they just stop attending, of course.

What draws the men in today? Computer gaming, pornography, extreme sports, to name a few. Somehow, church and school don't seem to belong on the top 5 (top 50?) list...

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Labels: apsotles, calling of men, discipleship, manhood