As it happens, I heartily agree with Sommers that emotional expressiveness is not always a good thing and that "stoicism and reserve may well be traits to be encouraged, not vices or psychological weaknesses to be overcome." (Having been accused on occasion of being emotionally repressed, I was especially cheered by her account of research indicating that repression may be healthier than wallowing in emotion.)

And I certainly agree that schools should not be in the business of getting students, male or female, "in touch with their feelings," especially through intrusive and psychologically manipulative methods requiring children to describe why they feel bad about themselves or why they fight with their parents. Whether this is a gender issue is a different matter; Sommers produces no real evidence that such assignments are more injurious or alienating to boys than to girls.

Gender reformers like Gilligan and Pollack are wrong, of course, to depict the American "boy next door" as a near basket case, tragically disconnected from his feelings, emotionally isolated, enslaved by the rigid codes of manhood and only a few degrees removed from the Columbine killers. Yet, while Sommers criticizes this reductive view, she also seems to be agree that "emotional disengagement" and "reluctance to engage in social interactions" are indeed typical of boys. However, she regards these traits as biologically "hard-wired" and therefore in no need of fixing.

In fact, I suspect that just as Gilligan and Pollack overestimate the rigidity of cultural stereotypes of masculinity, at least in middle-class families, Sommers overestimates the rigidity of biological distinctions. Both sides underestimate the social and emotional skills of boys, even if these skills tend to manifest themselves somewhat differently than those of girls.

Sommers also ignores the fact that in some segments of American society, boys still do get a lot of grief if they stray from conventional masculinity. I suspect that the tyranny of the jock culture is still far more prevalent in our schools, and more damaging to boys' learning, than the tyranny of teacher-enforced androgyny. I really don't see why Pollack should be ridiculed for hoping to see a time when boys can "safely stay in the 'doll corner' as long as they wish, without being taunted" -- even if far more girls than boys will choose to drift into that corner.

To be fair, Sommers is hardly a champion of unbridled machismo. She believes that a proper education should temper masculine aggressiveness with gentleness and civility; she even offers some tantalizing evidence that in a single-sex school with male teachers, many boys feel liberated to pursue interests in non-stereotypic activities such as art.

Unfortunately, these themes are subsumed in a biology-as-destiny drumbeat. It seems that every time Sommers refers to boys' competitiveness, she has to preface it with the word "natural" -- which eventually makes one wonder if non-competitive boys are somehow unnatural.

Should a proper education be tailored to the supposedly distinct qualities of boys and girls? There is no doubt that many single-sex schools and classes, some of which are described in "The War Against Boys," serve children very well. But these are carefully designed educational programs in which students get a great deal of focused attention. They would probably work even if they were coed -- though, undoubtedly, there are some children who learn better without being distracted by the opposite sex.

In the end, Sommers herself seems to conclude that boys and girls really need the same things out of their schooling: firm moral rules, structured and guided learning, healthy competition combined with teamwork. Maybe, as she suggests, boys need these things more. Is that really a point worth arguing?

Sommers is right about many things -- above all, the fact that boys need attention and encouragement at least as much as girls do. It will be too bad if her tendency toward retro-sounding rhetoric about the perils of "feminizing" boys alienates many educators who need to hear her arguments the most.

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