How our society can help teen boys thrive

Malina Saval, Author and Journalist, shares advice on the aspects that society could change in order to make life and growing up easier for teenage boys
Raising Boys | How Society Can Help Teen Boys Thrive
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How our society can help teen boys thrive

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I think there are so many things that society can do in order to make so much easier for teenage boys. Number one, again the education system has to change. We need to create more of an environment that plays to the strengths of these boys and that understands that they learn in a particular way that is so much different than the way the education is now, which is structured for girls. That is the number one thing. Number two, society has to stop playing into all these stereotypes that they have about teenage boys because what it does it creates a vicious cycle where it sort of sets boys up for a sense of failure because all around them in their society are these notions about boys that are not true. For example, if you tell a boy often enough that you don´t have any emotions, it sets up a boy for thinking that he has to conform to those certain stereotypes that basically is a self-fulfilling prophecy. So society has to step away from all of those conclusions, false conclusions that they make about teenage boys and let teenage boys on their own tell us who they are and give them a voice through which they can explain how they are feeling, what they want to do and not have it so much come from the opposite side where the adult society is telling teenage boys how they act. We need to give teenage boys some space and some room to teach us exactly what their experience is like right now in 2012 in America.

Malina Saval, Author and Journalist, shares advice on the aspects that society could change in order to make life and growing up easier for teenage boys

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Malina Saval

Journalist & Author

Malina Saval is the author of The Secret Lives of Boys: Inside the Raw Emotional World of Male Teens. As a journalist, her work has appeared in Variety, Los Angeles Times, Glamour, LA Weekly, Flaunt, Jerusalem Post, Forward, Heeb, Premiere.com, Moment and Fanzine, for whom she pens a monthly column entitled "Sponsored in Part." Her short fiction and essays have been included in Palehouse and The Truth About the Fact literary journals and in the anthology Now Write! Nonfiction: Memoir, Journalism and Creative Nonfiction Exercises from Today's Best Writers and Teachers. She's lectured at several universities, including University of Central Florida and University of Eastern Michigan, and has appeared as a special expert guest on the Tavis Smiley Show (PBS), Fox News, NPR's "Talk of the Nation" and the Patt Morrison Show.  

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