I’m going to attempt to square some of your (very interesting) claims with some work I’m currently doing. I hope it’s fruitful for the both of us. Unlike plenty of other contemporary feminists, Luce Irigaray works to maintain sexual difference. (This is in stark opposition to, for example, Judith Butler who calls into question biological difference. Social (and socially-constructed) gender is her focus. And this is in keeping with lots of contemporary work in feminism.) Irigaray asks us to consider the following in order to work out how sex (indeed, biology!) might determine the structuring of our subjectivity: (I’m taking this from her excellent essay “A Two-Subject Culture” in a collection called democracy begins between two.) “-being born of the same gender or of a different gender from one’s own: being the daughter of a mother or the son of a mother;
-whether or not one can conceive a living being in one’s own body;
-whether one procreates within oneself or outside oneself;
-whether one can nourish another living being from one’s own body or only through one’s own labour.
Events of this kind, which are differently organized in the life of a woman or of a man, create two identities, two ways of looking at the world, which cannot be reduced to one.”
Although Irigaray is responding to contemporary feminism, her work has serious repercussion for the sort of thing you’re working on. If young girls and women can literally and figuratively conceive other living beings in their own bodies, they’re radically capable of being-for-an-other in ways that young men are not. (This, I suspect, is part of what we mean when we say that young men are not emotionally mature. Though there’s certainly more to it.) As such, young women privilege intersubjective relations and succeed in environments (read: school) where young men struggle. To put it crudely, young women are able, then, to “read” others, to be whatever an other (teachers, fellow students) may need them to be, to nourish wholly other things (ideas, equations, relationships with authorities) within their own bodies. Young men can’t (yet) do this. I think plenty of men learn what it means to be-for-an-other (when they have children, when they enter into a true relationship, when they’re called on to exist, quite literally, for something other than themselves), but until they do, they cannot succeed in an environment that requires this of them. Attention span has something to do with this. To pay close attention to something (anything) else is to be-for-it. You give yourself over to it. You allow yourself to be held captive by it. If you are uncomfortable doing this, or have little practice with it unless it’s an object of your attention that you’ve chosen, you’ll likely do poorly in school. I’ve just begun thinking this out here, and I recognize that this does not yet address why it is that young men succeeded in school in the past (in fact, it was created for them, as we all know).

I think you’re on to something with “milennials” (I mean the word and the concept)–we are nothing but products of our world, and what we call modern technology has of course radically shaped us. But I also think there’s something important happening in Irigaray’s assessment of what shapes our subjectivity. The bizarre irony here is that a system that was created FOR men and young men, BY men, has somehow failed to succeed for them.

Thoughts?

Cheers.

I’m going to attempt to square some of your (very interesting) claims with some work I’m currently doing. I hope it’s fruitful for the both of us. Unlike plenty of other contemporary feminists, Luce Irigaray works to maintain sexual difference. (This is in stark opposition to, for example, Judith Butler who calls into question biological difference. Social (and socially-constructed) gender is her focus. And this is in keeping with lots of contemporary work in feminism.) Irigaray asks us to consider the following in order to work out how sex (indeed, biology!) might determine the structuring of our subjectivity: (I’m taking this from her excellent essay “A Two-Subject Culture” in a collection called democracy begins between two.) “-being born of the same gender or of a different gender from one’s own: being the daughter of a mother or the son of a mother;
-whether or not one can conceive a living being in one’s own body;
-whether one procreates within oneself or outside oneself;
-whether one can nourish another living being from one’s own body or only through one’s own labour.
Events of this kind, which are differently organized in the life of a woman or of a man, create two identities, two ways of looking at the world, which cannot be reduced to one.”
Although Irigaray is responding to contemporary feminism, her work has serious repercussion for the sort of thing you’re working on. If young girls and women can literally and figuratively conceive other living beings in their own bodies, they’re radically capable of being-for-an-other in ways that young men are not. (This, I suspect, is part of what we mean when we say that young men are not emotionally mature. Though there’s certainly more to it.) As such, young women privilege intersubjective relations and succeed in environments (read: school) where young men struggle. To put it crudely, young women are able, then, to “read” others, to be whatever an other (teachers, fellow students) may need them to be, to nourish wholly other things (ideas, equations, relationships with authorities) within their own bodies. Young men can’t (yet) do this. I think plenty of men learn what it means to be-for-an-other (when they have children, when they enter into a true relationship, when they’re called on to exist, quite literally, for something other than themselves), but until they do, they cannot succeed in an environment that requires this of them. Attention span has something to do with this. To pay close attention to something (anything) else is to be-for-it. You give yourself over to it. You allow yourself to be held captive by it. If you are uncomfortable doing this, or have little practice with it unless it’s an object of your attention that you’ve chosen, you’ll likely do poorly in school. I’ve just begun thinking this out here, and I recognize that this does not yet address why it is that young men succeeded in school in the past (in fact, it was created for them, as we all know).

I think you’re on to something with “milennials” (I mean the word and the concept)–we are nothing but products of our world, and what we call modern technology has of course radically shaped us. But I also think there’s something important happening in Irigaray’s assessment of what shapes our subjectivity. The bizarre irony here is that a system that was created FOR men and young men, BY men, has somehow failed to succeed for them.

Thoughts?

Cheers.

I graduated from a University 11 yrs ago and it was the case then. Not all classes, but a VERY large portion. My degree program was cut to make room for a lecture hall with over 300 seats.

This was pre-internet, and universities are still paying for those kind of outdated classrooms. It will be years before they catch up, if they ever do. It isn’t just the Universities doing this, it’s in middle schools and high schools too, just on a smaller scale.

I have one teenager who spends most of her time on the internet. Her skills, at age 14, already far surpass mine. This IS the future and the now.

Sitting in a classroom is not a child’s job, as parents like to say. It’s a holding place, to keep them from being in the workforce. This thinking is way outdated, and a waste of unused and untapped, creative, young energy!

I graduated from a University 11 yrs ago and it was the case then. Not all classes, but a VERY large portion. My degree program was cut to make room for a lecture hall with over 300 seats.

This was pre-internet, and universities are still paying for those kind of outdated classrooms. It will be years before they catch up, if they ever do. It isn’t just the Universities doing this, it’s in middle schools and high schools too, just on a smaller scale.

I have one teenager who spends most of her time on the internet. Her skills, at age 14, already far surpass mine. This IS the future and the now.

Sitting in a classroom is not a child’s job, as parents like to say. It’s a holding place, to keep them from being in the workforce. This thinking is way outdated, and a waste of unused and untapped, creative, young energy!

Obviously you are not the only person thinking about these important issues. You might enjoy a white paper I wrote this summer that explores some of these issues. References to other studies are included. I just got the PDF copy up on my site today:

http://es21c.okstate.edu/resources/SecondMillenium.pdf