America devotes considerable attention to the troubles facing young men, from stalled careers and declining family formation to loneliness, pornography, video games, anger and apathy. Too many young men appear to lack direction, discipline, purpose and confidence.

Yet the debate often avoids a more basic question: Who is responsible for forming boys into men? For much of American history, that responsibility belonged largely to fathers, older male relatives, career mentors and respected men within the community.

Before education became centered in brick and mortar classrooms, boys often began learning beside their fathers. Their instruction extended beyond literacy and arithmetic to scripture, history, courage, duty, self control and the conduct expected of a man.

That arrangement began changing as education reformers including Horace Mann pushed for standardized schooling across the country. Mann, known as “the father of American education,” supported a system that required enormous numbers of teachers.

Women, who until then were typically homemakers, became the answer to that demand. Some believed women were naturally nurturing and morally suited to teaching children, while schools also saw an opportunity to hire workers who could be paid considerably less than men.

In 1838, Mann asked why communities should pay male teachers $25 or $30 a month when women could perform the work for roughly half that amount. By 1870, women accounted for nearly 90% of teachers in Massachusetts.

Industrialization also transformed fatherhood and the daily experience of boys. Sons who once watched their fathers work on farms, operate workshops or run family businesses increasingly saw less of them as men began working elsewhere.

A cultural division followed in which fathers primarily earned money while mothers took responsibility for education. That division helped move men away from the formative work that had once been considered central to raising boys.

Today, nearly 80% of public school teachers in America are women. At the same time, approximately one in five American children, representing more than 15 million children, live with their mothers but not their fathers.

Based on the share of female elementary teachers, a simplified statistical model indicates that nearly half of American children could finish kindergarten through fifth grade without entering a classroom led by a male teacher. That possibility leaves many boys with little regular exposure to men in school.

This does not mean female teachers provide an inferior education. Women entered a space that too many men vacated, and they continue carrying an enormous responsibility for educating girls and boys alike.

The concern emerges when heavily female classrooms intersect with the absence of fathers from millions of homes. Some boys may pass through formative years without a consistent male role model in the places where they spend most of their time.

Those years are when children develop confidence, courage, resilience and the capacity to handle frustration. The resulting question is not whether women can teach boys, but who is showing boys how to become responsible men.

Boys need meaningful contact with good men who treat intellectual and moral development seriously. They need men who can teach them to turn aggression into protection, competitiveness into excellence, physical strength into service and sexual desire into restraint, responsibility and commitment.

Influential men regularly debate what happened to struggling 25 year olds while paying far less attention to boys at ages 7, 10 or 13. Discussions about declining masculinity often overlook curriculum, history, character formation and what fathers should personally teach their sons.

The crisis facing boys is therefore also presented as an education crisis, but not one that another bureaucratic policy or government spending plan can solve. The heart of education is the human mind, and crucial formation begins while boys are still young.

Boys need more male teachers, along with fathers who participate in their schools and learning. They also need intellectuals who treat childhood education as seriously as geopolitics and politicians who care about who forms a child’s mind, not only who writes a school budget.

The message is captured in the author’s memory of his own father saying, “Stop complaining and do something about it.” Men cannot complain that education has become “too feminine” while continuing to treat the education of children as solely a woman’s responsibility.

The deeper cultural mistake occurred when men gradually stopped regarding childhood education as essential to the process of boys becoming men. Reversing the crisis requires men to return to that responsibility and become visible participants in boys’ intellectual, moral and personal formation.

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