Males are falling behind in greater numbers each year academically and economically. Our society is still using the nineteenth century belief Males should be strong and Females should be protected. This belief allows much aggression toward Males to make them tough. Since society's belief, Males should be strong allows much aggression toward Males from day one, Males are operating with much higher average stress that makes learning information age skills much more difficult. Males are not given positive mental, emotional, social, and academic support, knowledge and skills (unless by accident). Society in its ignorance considers such attention and support as coddling the Male child. Society holds Males should pull themselves up by their own bootstraps.

Persons experience feelings of self-worth based on the love, honor, respect, and support they receive from society. Males who can achieve in the classroom will do so. He will receive sufficient love, honor, respect, and support for academics and will continue to put forth more effort. When a Male Child is not showing a measure of achievement in school, he will tend to receive more neglect, abuse, and ridicule from parents and “teachers” than the Female child. This along with his lack of support in those areas anyway will only add to his lack of interest and motivation in academics. This signals to the Male Child that he will not receive the essentials of self-worth in academics. He will then push himself in areas such as games, sports, and other pursuits to receive love, honor and respect (self-worth) from his peers. Over a period of years, this leaves Males far behind Females in mental, emotional, social, and academic knowledge and skills. This is creating the ever growing international Male Crisis that will only get worse for Males and then get much worse for Females when Males begin to take back with interest, their power and status. I feel society will continue maintaining this mistreatment of Males until a critical point is reached.

Boys need just as much coddling as the girls and just as much mental, emotional, social, and academic support as the girls. While neglect of Male children and boys may have proved useful in the more physical nineteenth century, it is working opposite of need in the information age where it requires much more accumulated mental, emotional, social and academic skills acquired over time. In these areas, Males are being seriously shortchanged.

It is true girls appear to mature faster than boys for the simple reason that mental, emotional, social, and academic support are seen as coddling the boys. This is leaving many Males far behind girls .

The aggression Males receive from day one, creates four bad things for Males mentally, emotionally, and socially: 1. It creates higher layers of mental frictions (redefined from higher average stress) which inhibit thinking, learning, and motivation in mental areas. 2. These higher layers of mental frictions also create improper pace and intensity in approaching mental work (apply too much effort when approaching new material) and higher tension that hurts motivation to learn. 3. The aggression Males receive and less positive (nurturing) attention also create the higher average stress, which then creates the nervous energy or over activity. 4. This extra aggression Males receive creates the Male ego or defensive cushion that the Male develops from an early age to protect them from the aggressions they receive from society. This Male ego or defensive cushion has the negative consequences of further alienating the Male from “any” various mental, emotional, social, and academic supports they “might just” receive from society. When Males hear firm or hard words from others like teachers or others their minds are thinking defense and not thinking about learning and enjoying the learning process.

For women, due to the nineteenth century belief women should be protected and still in effect today, this has created much overprotection and even indulgence for many women. It is creating very low layers of mental frictions collectively for women. This makes thinking, learning, and motivation mental areas much easier. This protection and continuous attention from day one also create a high speed expressway of continuous, mental, emotional, social and academic support and advancement in many areas over time (years). These two continual supports from society over time provide nearly everything a person needs today to succeed in the information age. Since women are given through overprotection, even indulgence, the benefits of love, honor, respect, and continual support, all of the benefits of self-worth from an early age without qualification (simply for being girls), they are working with much more continual support and interaction to accumulate more continual mental, emotional, social, and academic knowledge and skills that can be transformed easily into money, power, status, and image. Even after this, society’s protection, continued support and view toward beauty and charm continually helps them in the information age.

As for women, they having been told the same teaching that persons are naturally better in some areas or simply work harder. They may truly feel they are simply more intelligent or have worked harder to achieve what they have achieved. In our world, again women like men often reflect their environment and treatment upon others and so do not appreciate difference in treatment. Also, in our world of insecurities, it is no wonder when women achieve, to boost their insecurity, as affects everyone, they will believe this achievement is due to more intelligence or greater effort on their part and not due to any environmental variables.

By showing Males and Females how our environments greatly affect thinking and learning, students will have much more respect for themselves and for others. By providing students with tools to approach their lives differently to continually improve their abilities, students will then have a continuous hope of developing in time, many if not all of the qualities they admire in others. Students will then have a continuous hope of changing and becoming better, newer persons with each passing day.

We need to begin teaching Males and Females how our individual environments greatly affect our skills and abilities over time. We need to show Males and Females how differences in treatment do exist in the information age and have hurt Males over time. By providing this understanding, both Males and Females will begin to have much more appreciation for the other in terms of their differences in environment. Males will recognize how their environments are creating their difficulties and remove from their shoulders the false belief they are somehow genetically inferior or simply not working hard enough. Females will perhaps also recognize both how differential treatment has hurt the Male and speak with greater care and understanding rather than the current society allowed verbal, silent abuse, and patronization they presently give Males they feel they have an advantage over. By providing this understanding, the two groups will be able to exist in more harmony and maintain better relationships.

To reduce and eliminate this problem and help Males have a more equal footing, parents, teachers, administrators, and all forms of media need to be taught how to treat Males in society with as much respect and care as they presently provide Female students. This is the only way to help Males begin to catch up in all of the many social areas they are presently lagging. This new way of thinking will be very difficult for the Male parent, teacher, administrator, or other professional for they have been raised with the old, more aggressive ways for many years and have come to base their feelings of self-worth upon their money, power, status, and image.

Try to think of all the good things a child (and adult) has to have to compete in the information age. They need stability, love, mildness, ease of nature, support, kindness, low average stress, they need mental/emotional/social/academic support at all times, not because they have earned it, but just because they are human beings. This will lead boys and girls to develop and enjoy mental work such as academics and other information age skills that will accumulate in quality and continued enjoyment over time. This is where boys are hurt both academically and economically by not being given same good things girls receive without qualification. As you can see, girls are given this proper treatment simply because they are girls. For many Males, it will require cognitive understanding of the problem and a willingness to begin treating Male children with the same respect and give the same positive attention to the Male children as they do Female children.
1. I fear followers of the genetic models will try to build a case for genetic learning differences or body mass requiring more activity or tactile learning. Note that nice middle class Males do not have this problem. Also the view of differences in brain activity are more due to large differences in differential mental, emotional, social, physical, and educational reinforcement over time, not organic differences.

I tell those who would still cling to the myth of permanence in ability they are killing their students whereas my learning theory offers two large, cognitive tools to continually improve ability and hope for children and adults. They are free to choose the myth of permanence in ability or my theory that provides hope and improvement.

The Male Crisis is one application of my Learning Theory. Feel free to make copies of all files.
Site is eight years old but still useful Complete theory by e-mail is the latest one.

Complete version to all by e-mail at mayfieldga@bellsouth.net
The false teaching of fixed intelligences has made many students and adults feel inferior in different areas. By teaching this harmful belief, we are placing jagged pieces of metal and broken bottles in the hallways to cut and maim our students. This false teaching in society has created anxiety, hopelessness, and psychological suffering, which is leading to many escapes such as drug/alcohol abuse, violence, depression, and suicide. I hope you can see the connection between the harmful teachings of permanence in ability and its deadly effect on the mental/emotional health of our students and adults. This theory provides two large tools we can use to continually improve our abilities and our lives.

We need to see mental stress more accurately as “layers of mental frictions” that accumulate in our lives and hurt our ability to think and learn. By redefining average stress as average layers of mental frictions, we now have tools to more permanently reduce layers of mental frictions and improve thinking, learning, and mental/emotional health. By seeing stress more accurately as layers of mental frictions we can see how our individual environments then greatly affect our ability to think, learn, and improve. We can use this better definition of stress to help students and adults continually improve their ability to think and learn by learning how to more permanently reduce layers of mental frictions.

Stress is more accurately defined as layers of mental frictions. When we are performing mental work, our minds are also subconsciously working on other layers of mental frictions from various problems, circumstances, etc. All of us are working on different amounts or layers of mental frictions that impede our ability to think, learn, and develop skills over time. Try to picture an upright rectangle representing our full ability or full mental energy to think and learn. Then begin drawing from the bottom, narrowly spaced, horizontal lines to represent layers of small and some large layers of mental frictions our minds may be working on consciously and below the surface or subconsciously. The space we have left represents our leftover ability to think, learn, and grow mentally and emotionally. The length of this space also represents our length of reflection time or time to think more deeply to consider long-term rewards or consequences for a course of action. This shows just how our individual environments greatly affect our ability to think and learn. Persons with high layers of mental frictions will have to work harder to receive the same mental reward for mental work expended. Ask yourself, which makes more sense, are we just genetically more or less able or do our individual environments greatly affect our ability to think, learn, and develop skills. For our own good, we need to recognize how our individual environments greatly affect ability and how we can more permanently reduce mental frictions to continually improve thinking, learning, and mental/emotional health.

This tool provides a way to permanently reduce layers of mental frictions. We need to do more than just solve a problem creating a mental friction. We need to look at the elements that create problems and the values that may be creating those problems. Then, we can begin to understand a more each day how the elements of our circumstances, responsibilities, and problems are creating mental frictions as they come up. Then with a small change in a weight or value we are placing on something in our lives and developing a mental principle or rule in a certain area of our life we can then resolve and more permanently remove that layer of mental friction. By slowly understanding how layers of mental frictions are created, we can then learn to approach those elements in our lives more correctly to keep like mental frictions from occurring in the future. This enables “all of us” to more permanently reduce layers of mental frictions that hurt our ability to think and learn.

With each more permanently removed layer of mental friction we will continually improve thinking, learning, and extend reflection time (think more deeply, with more complexity, and more correctly). Remember, to more permanently reduce layers of mental frictions we need to change the principle or value that created that mental friction, “not just solve that problem” to prevent similar mental frictions from occurring. For problems related to circumstances and responsibilities, you may see how such obligations may be necessary. While the problems may remain, the mental conflicts you had will be removed. For problems, which do not fit in with our values or weights, it is up to each one to decide whether to approach that problem differently or change a weight or value related to that problem. This will more permanently remove layers of mental frictions. This will also improve sensitivity and awareness to information.

As a person accumulates “very high” layers of mental frictions, he begins to experience two bad things; he experiences psychological suffering and his reflection time shortens - His desires, goals, enjoyments, and methods of problem solving become more simplistic, short-term, and less thought-out. The psychological suffering and much shorter reflection time create a powerful need for relief. This condition then makes drug/alcohol abuse, the catharsis of violence, and suicide more appealing in view of the immediate, temporary reward or release from layers of mental frictions such escapes provide. By helping students and adults maintain lower layers of mental frictions, we can help prevent the psychological enhanced with training. By teaching this skill, we will greatly improve deeper thinking and reflection skills for students and adults to develop and accumulate more complex information over time. Teaching this skill is also extremely important for creating the intrinsic reward in students needed to stimulate more independent learning by students outside the classroom. We cannot teach all students need to know inside the classroom. Again, we need to provide these tools for students to accumulate from both home and the classroom all of the necessary knowledge and skills they need to compete in the information age. suffering that leads to many harmful escapes. Too bad this wonderful technique is not being used in school today.

Second tool: the myth of hard work is beneficial only when performing old work (skills already mastered), not in performing new mental work (skills in process of being learned). There are misguided beliefs regarding mental learning when they attempt to compare mental learning with physical work. As a result, we have many sayings such as “Just believe you can do it." or "Just put your mind to it" and you will succeed. These phrases sound good but still follow the harmful teachings of fixed intelligences.

The attitude of hard work when performing a new mental work actually impedes learning more importantly the essential, long-term motivation to learn and continually love acquiring more knowledge and skills. As our pace and intensity in approaching mental work exceeds our immediate knowledge and experience, we create much greater mental friction and further impede our ability to think and learn. This hurts both short and long-term motivation in mental areas for students by reducing mental reward received for mental work expended. This also shortens our length of reflection time (ability to think more deeply).

Approaching mental work correctly is important for students to learn and enjoy learning new knowledge and academics. The little girl said "This goes here and that goes there." had the right idea. In time, she will know where this and that goes and will learn more advanced skills with equal enjoyment. In the physical world, we may work hard; in the mental world, we need to work easy. The dynamics of approaching all mental work correctly affects every aspect of our life. The dynamics of approaching mental work correctly should be seen as a skill we should use at “all times” to approach our individual environments more correctly.

By showing students how their individual environments greatly affect their ability to think, learn, long-term motivation to learn, and grow mentally and emotionally, students will have much more respect and esteem for themselves and for others. By providing students with tools to approach their lives more delicately and differently to continually change and improve their lives, students will then have a continuous hope of developing in time, many if not all of the qualities they admire in others over time. Students will then have a continuous hope of changing and becoming better, newer persons with each passing day. This will reduce much hopelessness, many harmful escapes and other problems created by our horrible teachings of fixed intelligences in school such as dropouts, drug/alcohol abuse, catharsis of violence, and suicide.

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