The Trouble with Boys featuring Peg Tyre
presented by Kiewit Corporation
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Holiday Inn Central

11:30am – Registration
12:00 – 1:00pm – Luncheon featuring Peg Tyre

Tickets
$75.00   Patron (includes autographed copy of book)
$50.00   Sustainer (luncheon only)
$25.00   Student (25 years of age and under – luncheon only)

*Books will be available for purchase for just $15.00.  Download the Author Luncheon Reservation Form.  For more information contact Camp Fire at 397-5809 ext. 213.

About the Author
Journalist and writer Peg Tyre is a prize-winning investigative reporter and the author of the controversial and widely praised book, The Trouble with Boys:  A Surprising Report Card on Our Sons, Their Schools, and What Parents and Educators Must Do (Crown 2008).  New York Times best-selling writer Michael Thompson, co-author of Raising Cain, has called it “passionate, powerful and persuasive.”  Dr. Mel Levine, author of A Mind at a Time, called it “vital.”  He wrote, “Boys have their troubles and The Trouble with Boys sensitively reveals them.”  James Garbarino, author of Lost Boys, says The Trouble with Boys “changes the way we look at something we thought we understood.”

Tyre spent two decades in journalism, as a magazine feature writer at New York magazine, a newspaper reporter at New York Newsday, an on-air correspondent for CNN and most recently, as a long time staff writer for Newsweek, covering social trends and education.  Between 2001 and 2008, she pursued her passion:  examining the fault lines in American culture formed by class, gender, race, ideology and upbringing for the national weekly.  Praised for being “analytical,” “often counterintuitive” and “not afraid to take on society’s sacred cows,” Tyre’s cover stories were top sellers at the magazine.  

A graduate of Brown University, she has lectured at Harvard University and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and is a frequent speaker at public and private schools around the nation. She continues to write about education, social trends and culture. She lives in Brooklyn, New York with her husband, novelist Peter Blauner and their two sons. Currently, she is a non-resident fellow at The Education Sector, a non-partisan educational think tank in Washington, D.C., and is at work on another book.

Below Peg Tyre discusses her new book:  The Trouble With Boys: A Surprising Report Card on Our Sons, Their  Schools and What Parents and Educators Must Do (Crown 2008): 

“I spent five years covering education blinded to an enormous and important story unfolding right in front of my face—the pervasive underachievement of boys in school.  How did I miss it for so long?  I’m a grateful beneficiary of the feminist movement and I came of age reading books like Carol Gilligan’s In A Different Voice and Mary Pipher’s Reviving Ophelia.  I was focused on the struggles girls face in schools. In fairness, it’s not always easy to spot a trend—schools are very fragmented and what you see in single classroom, or even a handful of classrooms, tells you almost nothing about the nation as a whole.  But gradually, from talking to teachers, principals, headmasters, educational researchers and some of my sons’ smart, underperforming guy friends, I began to sense that something had changed in our culture and our schools that was causing boys to fall behind. 

I began to comb through data—and what I found was not comforting.  Boys get expelled from preschool at four times the rates of girls, they are prescribed the lion’s share of ADHD medication, they get most of the C’s and D’s in middle school, and they drop out of high school more than girls.  Currently, only 43% of undergraduates in the United States are men.  I began visiting schools that were addressing the boy problem as well as talking with educational researchers and policy makers.

In 2006, I wrote a cover story for Newsweek called the “Boy Crisis,” which talked about the way boys are falling behind and what some schools are doing about it.  The response astonished me.  The story was a one of Newsweek’s top selling covers in recent years.  The web traffic was enormous.  Several hundred parents, mostly well educated, empowered mothers of sons, emailed to thank me for writing about the central drama of their family life—the mismatch between their sons and school.  Some people didn’t like the story.  One woman wrote in to complain that Newsweek had devoted so much space to the topic. After thousands of years of oppression, “we’re on top for a nanosecond and it’s a crisis?” She’s right, of course.  And any discussion of boys and school needs to keep the history of women’s struggle for equal rights in view.  The story also generated an angry response from a small group of largely academic feminists who claimed that my story was part of a “backlash” against girls.

The ferocity of the response from the academic feminists was telling—and I began to understand why talking about the underachievement of boys can be so difficult.  My book, The Trouble With Boys is an attempt to frame a discussion about education and gender in a new way.  I am not interested in rehashing a debate about gender politics left over from 1978.  We can no longer talk about gender and education like a seesaw—when girls are up, boys are down and visa versa.  Yes, the struggle for equal rights for women continues—and there is much work to be done, particularly when it comes to equity issues in the workplace.  Yes, there need to be more women in technology and computer fields and more women in corporate board rooms and in Congress.  But we don’t get there by ignoring the very real struggles of schoolboys.  Right now, we have 2.5 million more college-going females than college-going males.  The growing education gap between men and women is having, and will continue to have, massive implications for our children and our children’s children.  My book is an attempt to take a serious look at what is ailing our sons and what parents and educators must do.”

For more information or to order your tickets, contact Cindy Leiferman at bleif@cox.net.

Click here for more information about the Camp Fire Guild and the amazing support they provide to Camp Fire.

Happy Anniversary to Camp Fire USA – Midlands Council!

If you are interested in sharing your memories of your time in Camp Fire, please contact Michelle at 397-5809 ext. 213 or mzych@campfireomaha.org.

Once the night arrived, excited kids taught their parents about the Omaha Symphony while each family created homemade instruments and enjoyed a healthy hot meal.

Camp Fire fans came from near and far to celebrate the Big Red Tailgate to benefit the kids that rely on the agency to help them become caring confident youth and future leaders.  Many thanks to the Camp Fire Guild and the entire Big Red Tailgate Committee for their hard work to ensure the success of the event. 

Serving as Honorary Chairs were Judy and Bob Bates, who have come to know Camp Fire and our kids quite well over the past year.  Event chairs Kate Betsworth and Elizabeth Boyer assembled a great team who spent the past few months organizing a winning event, raising more than $147,000 for Camp Fire.  Highlights of the event included former Huskers welcoming Camp Fire kids for a halftime performance of the Nebraska Fight Song.

A Special Thanks to all of our sponsors and supporters who helped Camp Fire score a touchdown for kids in our community!
Big Red Tailgate III Sponsors

Quarterback
Mutual of Omaha
Mutual of Omaha Bank
Valmont Industries

Running back
Home Instead
Gallup
H&M Trucking
Lincoln Financial Group

Linebacker
AmeriSphere
Bank of the West
ConAgra Foods
Cox Communications
DRI Title & Escrow
First National Bank
Gordmans, Inc.
Koley Jessen Attorneys
MarketSphere
Nobbies Party Store
Peter Kiewit Sons’, Inc.
Pinnacle Bank
Security National Bank
Union Pacific

Camp Fire kid Miguel said his favorite part was the syrup!  Thank you Gallup for raising nearly $400 to help kids eat over the weekend!

After a bountiful lunch in the Physicians Mutual cafeteria, the kids spent the afternoon discovering the wonders that go into the world of providing insurance.  A water balloon game taught them about the importance of targeted marketing while a peek at the security cameras showed all that goes into keeping their building secure.  The kids were even able to make their own bona fide Physicians Mutual security tags for future visits.

Camp Fire at Work is designed to give Camp Fire kids the opportunity to see what jobs are available for them in the future if they stay in school and work hard.  Thank you to everyone at Physicians Mutual who made the day possible for so many kids.

Thanks to the many members of the Park East Neighborhood Association for investing in our community and ensuring that our neighborhood is a safer place to live and play.