By Mary Venuto
One day while waiting at the dentist’s office sociology associate professor, Edward Morris, picked up a Newsweek magazine that depicted a group of elementary aged boys bleakly staring back at the camera. The headline read “The Boy Crisis: At Every Level of Education They’re Falling Behind. What to Do?” This prompted Morris to write his book, “Learning the Hard Way,” as a way to give a sociologically informed response to this social issue.
“I was interested in how the article framed the educational underperformance of boys: as uniform across all groups of boys…and as a zero-sum game where if girls progress, boys lose out.”
Thus began Morris’ six year study on understanding the