[Opinion] The Boy Crisis

Mothers who have girls tend to prefer co-ed high schools. That is because their daughters can get higher grades in a co-ed school since male students will lower the curve there.

Korea Minjok Leadership Academy, a high school that attracts many of the country’s brightest minds, accepted three more female students than male students last year.

It is not news that girls often monopolize top honors in university admissions and graduation. Mature elementary school girls say that they will make their future husbands obedient, which bothers their future mothers-in-law.

Korea is not alone in this problem. In U.S. elementary schools, the number of boys diagnosed as academically deficient is double that of girls. Newsweek defines this as the “boy crisis.” The magazine points out that the education system, which ignores difference between genders, is mainly responsible.

It is only natural that boys who are full of energy find it hard to sit quietly and listen to what teachers say just like their female classmates. Boys lag behind girls in non-cognition ability, such as faithfully completing assignments and maintaining good relationships with others.

The New York Times even ran a column that pondered the question of how women who graduate from college will get married. Women account for 57 percent of U.S. college students. Considering that women tend to marry men who are more educated than them, statistics say that one in three female college graduates in the U.S. will have difficulty finding a college-graduate mate.

It is good that there are more women with good educational backgrounds thanks to feminism, which stresses the education of women. But the newspaper seems to be saying that it is regrettable that this has led smart women to celebrate this “lonely victory” by themselves.

But the term “boy crisis” may be a misnomer; the real problem starts after boys and girls graduate from school. There is a small gap between the employment rate of male and female college graduates at 67.7 percent and 62.3 percent, respectively, as of 2005. But the differences in salary between male and female college graduates is as much as 710,000 won, with the salary of male graduates averaging 2.5 million won and that of their female counterparts averaging 1.79 million won. This can be considered gender discrimination. But it can also be interpreted that there are less women in types of occupation and positions that offer high salaries.

There are no textbooks, rules and teachers in society. Women who excel in studies alone lag behind men in social skills, including networking and political ability. If the country needs to teach male students study skills for them, it also needs to teach female students the skills to survive in society.

Kim Soon-deok, Editorial Writer, yuri@donga.com