The Editor’s Note: Modeling a positive future for all genders

Most of the women I knew when I was growing up in a rural community in the ‘70s and ‘80s worked in retail or food service, were stay-at-home moms and wives, or were nurses or teachers. It was a big deal to me when a woman veterinarian moved to the area, and I did, for a time, think I wanted to be a vet like her.

Of course, I saw women journalists, lawyers, athletes, and astronauts on TV, and I vividly remember when Sandra Day O’Connor became the first woman on the Supreme Court. But it was hard for me to see a path to these jobs. I could wrap my head around becoming a teacher, so that’s the path I chose.

In this month’s Kappan, Tim Spitsberg and Jonathan Plucker suggest that efforts similar to those used to get girls interested in STEM fields might be helpful to encourage boys to pursue the humanities. Boys, just like girls, need role models. And role modeling involves more than just presenting examples in the media, as helpful as that may be. When I was a little girl, I knew lots of options existed for women, but I wasn’t sure how real those options were for girls like me, from communities like mine. It’s important to have role models from your own community. It’s easier to find a path when there’s someone to follow.

The need for role models is especially acute for boys of color. As Bobby J. Rodgers Jr. and Devery J. Rodgers explain, boys of color see few men of color in their schools. Programs that bring Black men into schools as mentors or encourage Black men to become teachers can help Black male students develop a vision for their own futures. And Adriana Villavicencio shares how New York City’s Expanding Success Initiative helps Black and Latino boys find role models who are in 11th and 12th grade or in college — just a few steps ahead of them on the path.

If schools and communities don’t find a way to give boys more positive role models, less positive models will fill the vacuum. Today, many boys are finding their role models online, and the messages they’re hearing are not necessarily positive ones. Pasha Dashtgard of American University’s Polarization and Extremism Research and Extremism Lab tells Kappan that misogynist influencers like Andrew Tate are deliberately building connections with boys who are trying to understand what their place in the world will be as men and pushing them toward sexist, racist, antisemitic, and nihilist ideologies.

This is where we see that having good, positive role models for boys benefits young people of all genders. Far too many boys are finding role models who lift them up by putting others down. They need role models who will instill in them the kind of pride and confidence that enable them to participate in building a positive community where people of all genders — male, female, and nonbinary — feel safe, supported, and able to grow.