As we continue our series looking at wasted young lives, Dr leachim Semaj takes a look at how society marginalises boys.

CAREER OPTIONS and opportunities for boys are being narrowed because the society is feminising education, says psychologist and chief executive officer of the Job Bank, Dr Leachim Semaj, in an interview with The Sunday Gleaner.

Many learning activities in schools, he notes, are now almost exclusively female, because they have been "coloured so by popular culture".

In some ways, he says, the, packaging of the curriculum is "gender skewed' as the majority of teachers are women. But he argues more strongly that "academia has been feminised by society".

"We are in a phase now in Jamaica, culturally, where intel-lectual brilliance is not now necessarily seen as a male trait. There was a time in Jamaica when to be bright and to be male were fine. But the image of manhood that is being pursued in the popular culture is largely 'badmanism', athletics, and music. So much of the school environment is not seen as a place where the male ability flourishes," he adds.

Semaj says females, on the other hand, tend to find the academic aspect of school rewarding and are often proud to involve themselves in it.

"But for many of the boys, their sense of self, their identity, is anything but tied to school-related activities. As a result, they don't get the benefit because they don't apply themselves and they don't commit themselves," he continues, adding that the school itself gives boys the option of not participating in activities at times.

"I have been so many times to school functions and all the skits and plays and the drama involve just girls; the boys say they are not interested."

Semaj also points a finger at parents, arguing that many of them do a poor job of insisting that their sons participate more in educational activities.

"If they don't defend, if they don't insist that the homework be done, then it is not going to be done," Semaj says.