bring boys down. Carol Gilligans findings and Mary Piphers book Reviving Ophelia are pummeled and pummeled until Sommers makes her final point: Girls are doing great. Foster truthfully states that it is hard to trust someone who, instead of conducting her own studies, looked at raw data such as grade-point averages and the percentage of women attending college. Foster says that the media, the government, and school officials latch on to the girl-as-victim mentality for one reason: there is research to back it up. Mary Carroll from the American Library Association believes that Sommers is as much of a crisis monger as those she critiques. In the place of the feminists "Rousseauian philosophy of ethical romanticism," Sommers recommends directive moral or character education, inspiring a sense of responsibility and respect in all children, but particularly boys. Based on Sommers arguments, I conducted an interview of eight male and female college students between the ages of eighteen and twenty. I asked each person four questions: 1) Do you think boys encounter more difficulties growing up than girls? Why or why not? 2) Do you think the educational system is biased towards boys? Why or why not? 3) Do you think that the ideas posed by feminists have affected the way that the government, the media, academia, etc. view boys and girls? Why or why not? 4) Do you think that boys are lagging far behind girls in life (academically, socially, etc.)? Why or why not? Nearly every student disagreed with Sommers arguments. Every student disagreed with the statement that boys experience more difficulties. Most of the students stated that, ifanything, girls experience a slightly larger amount of difficulties. Most of the students agreed that the difficulties were evenly spread out for both sexes. Two of the males stated that they thought the educational system was biased towards males. They agreed that males are expected to do better and ...
