1.  Over the past few years, educational critics across the political spectrum have voiced concern about declining success rates for males in America’s schools and colleges. During the last decade, for example, the number of women in America’s colleges and universities has steadily increased until, today, women outnumber men in almost every academic field outside the so-called hard sciences. Do you think, as some critics claim, that school in America has become a “feminized” institution that is particularly hostile to boys?  What other reasons might explain declines in male educational achievement over the past two decades?