Yet the false picture remains and is dutifully passed along in schools of education, in 'gender-equity' workshops and increasingly to children themselves. Boys, rather than girls, are the ones in need of help, Sommers argues. Boys also get lower grades, participate in advanced-placement classes at lower rates, read fewer books, and are outnumbered by girls in student government, honor societies, school newspapers and debating societies. If boys are underrepresented at the top of the scale of educational indicators, they are overrepresented at the bottom. More boys than girls are forced to repeat a grade, get suspended from school or drop out altogether.
Boys also are much more likely to be involved in crime, alcohol and drugs.
Moreover, Hoff notes that while girls attempt suicide more often than boys, boys more often succeed. In a typical year, more than 4,000 young people aged 5 to 24 commit suicide, four-fifths or more of whom are male. According to Hoff, the cumulative effect of all this research was that public policy and private attention were lavished on girls while for the past decade many boys withered on the educational vine during their developmental years. Millions of dollars were spent studying how to improve girls' self-esteem and how to counter bias against them. The American Association of University Women acknowledges that the reality of gender equity in education is far more complicated now than 10 years ago but denies that it has focused on girls at the expense of boys.