Boys are struggling in America’s schools. Girls are on an ascendancy while their brothers fall further and further behind. They live in the same house, attend the same schools with the same teachers and curriculum, but their outcomes are vastly different.
Shawn Hardnett is a lifelong educator who refuses to ignore the problems facing boys. Not only will he not stay quiet, but he took the drastic action of fighting to open an all-boys’ charter school to serve middle school aged males in the two poorest wards of Washington DC. And he succeeded. He is now the founder and CEO of Statesmen College Preparatory Academy.
I had the recent privilege of interviewing Shawn —he explains why we must use the word “crisis” to describe what’s happening with our nation’s boys and why we must include all boys in the conversation. He describes the catastrophic consequences that the special education label has had on black boys and pushes back hard on the whole “toxic masculinity” narrative.
Sounding the alarm about boys is not popular but it is the right thing to do. Find out more about why during our conversation below.
