Before ever having children, I can remember my mother reading articles and commenting on how it seemed like education had it in for boys. Now, seven into my sons life-five years into his schooling-I know that she was right. What I did not understand until living through it myself, is what it is doing to our sons. Now before you tune me out and think “Spoiled kids are just the problem” or that some kids are experiencing mental illness issues as a result of being bought off to leave their uninterested parents alone-those are NOT the kids I am writing about.

My son is seven years old. He is bright and energetic. In fact he is so energetic that his uncle often asks me “How do you keep up?”, to which my answer is “I don’t, I just try!”. Three years ago it was brought to our attention that we needed to have him evaluated by the local public school district since he seemed to be struggling in school. We complied, like any concerned parent would, and were initially given what turned out to be an erroneous diagnosis. Thank God we had the means to have him evaluated in a private practice, or we would have unknowingly condemned him to what was referred to in the documentary “Waiting for Superman” as the “slow track”.

This year when the proverbial mess hit the fan and we reached the conclusion that we needed to move our son to a more suitable environment we also found out that the administration had-without informing the parents-that they would be aligning with Common Core. Yes, that is right. A private school, one that was seen by many parents as a “safe haven” away from Common Core chose to align with those misguided standards WITHOUT INFORMING THE PARENTS. Keep in mind these parents are paying upwards of $4,000 a year for their spot in this school.

This is just one example of the sorrows that have befallen our sons in the classrooms of not just our nation-but the world. In 2013 Time magazine, hardly a radical tome, wrote about it in an article titled “School Has Become Too Hostile For Boys” by educator Christina Hoff Sommers. In the second sentence of her article, she reaches the same conclusion I have come to recently.

“As school begins in the coming weeks, parents of boys should ask themselves a question: Is my son really welcome? A flurry of incidents last spring suggests that the answer is no.”

More recent articles have told the sad tales of other boys who have been suspended, or worse, for being too “violent” in their pretend play. Yup, their PRETEND play. A boy can no longer conquer the high seas as a pirate with a cutlass-OH NO!!

A first grader was suspended from a parish school in Ohio for shooting an imaginary arrow.

“A Catholic school in Cincinnati, Ohio, suspended a first-grader for pretending to shoot a bow and arrow. Thomas Aquinas, who said, “It is requisite for the relaxation of the mind that we make use, from time to time, of playful deeds and jokes,” is weeping in heaven.

Principal Joe Crachiolo of Our Lady of Lourdes called Martha Miele last Thursday to inform the family of her son’s three-day suspension.

“I didn’t really understand. I had him on the phone for a good amount of time so he could really explain to me what he was trying to tell me,” Miele told WLWT-5 NBC on Monday. “My question to him was, ‘Is this really necessary? Does this really need to be a three-day suspension under the circumstances that he was playing and he’s 6 years old?’”

These are the tip of the icebergs ladies and gentlemen. If we want to do something about this, I ask that we start letting educators know that this is unacceptable if we want to continue to lead the world as the “shining city on a hill” that Ronald Reagan spoke about in his speeches.

Run for the local school board in your town. Stick up for our children in the face of liberal, educational insanity like my acquaintance Dan Christensen in Gresham, OR. He blew the whistle on a $100,000 expenditure on a week long, mandatory “Equality conference” for teachers which was really a weekend at a high end resort where they learned things like “White people are the genesis of racism” and other ridiculous memes.

As a parent I implore you to advocate for your son, even if that means moving him to  a school which is more boy friendly. Boy friendly environments incorporate free play time and time to run and engage in imaginary play which helps develop executive function according to brain research.