In this Effortless English episode, AJ Hoge argues that contemporary schools wage a "war" against boys by forcing them into sedentary, passive learning environments that clash with their natural high energy, physical play, and curiosity about the natural world. He illustrates his point with vivid personal anecdotes about his five nephews—detailing their boundless activity, love of outdoor exploration, and deep focus on subjects that interest them, such as bugs and mushrooms. Hoge contends that schools punish boys for moving, shouting, or being physically expressive, leading teachers to label them as hyperactive and diagnose them with ADHD. He criticizes psychologists and psychiatrists who, in his view, prescribe medication to suppress boys’ natural behavior, calling this chemical child abuse. Hoge warns that such suppression can produce passive, unmotivated adults who become “corporate slaves,” and urges parents—especially fathers—to resist the system by homeschooling or otherwise providing disciplined yet freedom‑allowing environments that honor boys’ innate drive. The episode ends with a call to action for parents to protect their sons from the alleged institutional abuse.
Chapters
Welcome to the Effortless English show with the world's number one English teacher, AJ Hoge where AJ's more than 40 million students worldwide finally learn English once and for all without the boring textbooks, classrooms and grammar drills. Here's AJ with a quick piece to help you learn to speak fluent English effortlessly.
Hi, I'm AJ Hoge the author of Effortless. Learn to Speak English Like a Native. For free text transcripts, free text guides of this show and my past shows, go to effortless english club.com effortlessenglishclub.com Schools have declared war on boys. There is a war against boys, and it's happening. Well, it's happening in all different parts of our culture, in our societies worldwide, but especially in the schools. It's child abuse. I have five nephews, five young nephews, boys. My nephew here in Japan, he's a bundle of energy. He is super, super, super energetic and super curious. He's about 5 years old. Some of you know about him. I've already talked about him. First thing that happens when I go to visit him, his name is Masanori. I go to visit Masanori. The door opens and I say, oh, Masanori. He says, hey, Jay. The first thing he does, he jumps on me, right? Immediately, he wants to jump on me. He starts climbing on me. He wants me to carry him on his shoulders. He loves to wrestle with me, jump on me, throw stuff at me, okay? Lots of rough, active play. He's so energetic. He's got energy all day long. He wakes up early in the morning and he's energetic, running around. And he continues running around all day until he goes to bed. When we go outside, he almost never walks anywhere. He runs everywhere. It's always running, running, running. He loves to chase me, and he loves for me to chase him. Another cool thing about him, he's fascinated by plants and bugs and mushrooms, living things. So his favorite thing to do outdoors with me is to walk around hunting for bugs or acorns or mushrooms. So he's always looking around, and then when he finds one, he wants to look at it, pick it up, examine it. He's super curious. Not only that, because he's so curious, when he goes home, he asks his mom about these things, and his mom buys books about them. So Masanori knows a lot about mushrooms and plants and snakes. He likes snakes, too. He knows a lot about these things already because his mom has already read a lot of books about them. She reads them aloud to him. He can identify lots of different kinds of mushrooms. He knows which ones are poisonous, which ones aren't. It's amazing. Five years old, he knows more about mushrooms than almost 90% of the adults, probably 99% of the adults in the world. Quite impressive for a five year old. And he can never, never, never get enough. He always wants to be out there hunting around for things. Now, my other four nephews, my sister's boys, guess what their favorite game is? Attack. Uncle AJ of course. Right again. They love that rough, physical play. What do they like to do? Well, the two older boys, they are five and eight, they like to sword fight with me. So they love Star Wars. So what do they do? They want to get like these foam, these kind of soft swords. They give me one, and then they always have one or two. They usually have two. They're always cheating on me. And then they, they, they attack me. They just start banging on me and hitting me. They get pillows and hit me. They like to jump on me, grab me, okay, all the time. The other two are little babies. They're only, what, two and a half years old right now, but already these two little boys, they also, they like to crawl on me all the time. And when they see the older boys attacking, they kind of join in and they kind of laugh. Ha ha. And they'll kind of jump on me too. And they're always doing this to each other as well. They're always running around, they're always chasing each other. They're always throwing things. Okay? This is part of that great energy that boys have. Most boys have this just incredible energy. They wake up, they've got it, and they go all day long. They just want to run and jump and play. They want to be rough and physical and they want to wrestle. They want to throw things. They like to play with big things and build things. This is what they love doing. They also love examining and exploring the natural world, being outdoors. They all love being out there. And it reminds me of my own childhood. I was exactly the same as a kid. The only punishment my mom needed, she never needed to hit me. She hardly needed to yell at me. The most effective punishment she had against me was simply to keep me indoors. She would say, today you cannot go outside. And I would cry and scream, no, no. Like a prisoner. It was horrible because the thing I love most was being outdoors with my friends. I had a lot of other boys in my neighborhood, my same age, lots of us. There were about six of us that played together all the time. We lived right near each other. And all day long we would just Be running and fighting, fighting, fun, fighting, playing American football. Just. We were constantly moving and rough, and I always would come in dirty, destroyed my clothes. When I was a little kid, my pants, they always had big holes in the knees. And then my mom would try to fix them, and then a few weeks later, they would break again. So always, always, always I had holes in my knees because I was always crawling around on the ground. Two of our favorite games were American football. And I don't know if you know about American football, but it's a rough game. You know, you throw. You run and you throw the ball and then you tackle each other. And we would always jump on each other. And we played this other game called Smear the Queer, which has a funny name. I was going to laugh about it now, but basically, here's what the game is. You have a ball. Football, American football. And let's say there's six of us. So we throw the ball up in the air. One person throws it up in the air, Somebody catches it. Whoever catches it has to run. The other kids, all of them, all five of them in our case, try to grab them and tackle them and take them down to the ground. And I can remember one of the. One of the biggest kids that we played with, he was big and he was strong. And I can remember sometimes he would have, you know, there'd be three of us on him, like, you know, two of us on his back and one on one of his legs, and he would still be still going. Oh, man, it was so much fun. And then I was a little guy, so I would have to try to run and be really quick and avoid everybody. And we would play that game for hours and hours and hours running, grabbing each other, throwing each other on the ground, tackling. So that's what boys naturally want to do. It's healthy. It's normal. I'll tell you what's not normal. Forcing them to sit in a chair all day long indoors, staring at usually a woman, let's be honest, a woman teacher. Talking and talking and talking and talking and talking and talking and talking. That's what school's like. It's bad for girls, too. But the topic today is boys because I think it's especially horrible for boys. Boys get the worst of it. Girls can handle that a little better. Not all girls, but a lot of girls can handle it a bit better than boys. Boys really like to be rough. And this is torture. This is a kind of child abuse for boys. It's child abuse. It's torture. It's evil. They're hurting them by forcing them just to sit and on their butts, not moving. What happens if they start moving around like boys like to do? Then the teacher yells at them. What happens if they want to shout? The teacher yells at them, they're punished. What happens if they get out of their seat and they want to start running around the class like they naturally want to do? Oh, then big trouble. The teacher yells at them, they're punished. And if this keeps happening day after day, in America at least, then the real child abuse begins. Because then they label them. They get. The teacher gets upset and angry. She's tired because she can't control them. And that's what they want. Control, control. 100% control. And because they can't get that, they get mad. So they report the kid, they write up the kid. They report them to the school principal or social worker, something like that. And then the kid gets a label that they are hyperactive. Hyper means a lot or too much. Active means moving around. Hyperactive. Too active? Well, too active for who or for whom? That kind of activity is natural. We see, you know, look, put any decently healthy boys outdoors or indoors, just watch them. That's natural. Running around, playing, being rough, it's natural. So it's not too active for them, it's not too active for nature. So it's hyperactive for what? For the schools, for the teacher. It's too active for them because they want control and silence and quiet and everybody sitting. So they get hyperactive and they have all these little completely lies, completely wrong labels that they call them disorders or diseases. Disorder is the correct term, but. So it's adhd. Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder. It means they can't focus their attention long enough. Again, long enough for what or for whom? Long enough for the teacher. And focus their attention on what? On a bunch of boring crap that the teacher's blah, blah, blah, blah, blah talking about that the boys have no interest in. Of course not. But I'll tell you, like Masanori, he has all. He can focus on a bug. That kid can look and stare at a bug and study a bug for hours. In fact, usually it's all the adults. We're kind of like, huh? Oh my God. Okay, I'm kind of tired. Why don't we go do something else? And he's just, no more bugs. More bugs. I mean, he can just keep going and going and going. Same with mushrooms and plants. And my other nephews are the same. They get focused on something. Oh my God, they Can stay with it for a long, long time. They have plenty of attention. But it's for things in the natural world, usually. And it's things that they are curious about, not some abstract crap that the teacher's talking about. Two plus two equals four. Oh, my God. Come on. And then the purest evil of all in America, they'll send them to psychologists that give them these labels. There's something wrong with your boy because he doesn't want to sit on his butt all day just passively doing nothing, listening to a teacher talk about a bunch of bullshit. So clearly there's something wrong with the boy. Not the teacher, not the schools. And so he gets a label from a psychologist. And then they start pushing the drugs, trying to force the parents to give this natural, healthy boy drugs so that he will just focus and stay focused on all this bullshit. So he'll sit in his seat without wanting to move around. Drug dopamine. That's child abuse. That is chemical child abuse. I think those people, the psychologists who do that, the psychiatrist is actually psychiatrist, because only they can prescribe drugs. I think they should be in jail, at least in jail. I honestly think we should hang them for what they're doing. It's evil. It's evil. It's child abuse. And I don't know how much this is happening in other countries in the world, in happening a lot in the United States. And if you have a boy, especially, don't send them to the school system, because one of two things happens. Either one, they're natural, strong, healthy and active. And then they get. This happens to them. They get the labels and something's wrong with them and all this. And even if they don't get the drugs, they get this message, something's wrong with me. Something's wrong with me. Something's wrong with me. I'm not as smart as the other kids because. Because I don't want to just sit here and listen to this boring, useless information. Something's wrong with me. Maybe I'm not smart. I've got a learning disability. I can't learn. Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. But they're little kids, so they start believing this stuff. And that will really hurt them when they get older. That's one case. And it can be as bad too, if they start giving them drugs and stuff. It's horrible. But the other case is. Is just as bad. And that is where they become a good little boy. A good little boy who just wants to please the teacher all the time. And so they force themselves to sit and they Force themselves to obey. And they go against their natural energy, they go against their natural curiosity. And month by month, year by year, their natural curiosity and motivation and energy and passion drops, goes lower, goes lower, goes lower. Until finally they reach university level and they just, they got nothing. They're. They're like 20 year old old people. I don't know what I want to do. I don't know what to do. They're totally passive, just waiting for people to tell them what to do. What kind of job should I get? Someone should tell me, you know, they've been turned and this is what the school system wants actually turn them into passive little corporate slaves. Just tell me what to do and I'll do it. I'll be a good little boy. Horrible. It's a war on boys. It's a war on boys and we have to fight back. If you're a mom who has boys, you've got to fight against this. Take your kids out of school. Teach them yourself. Let them be boys. No, don't let them be disrespectful. Of course not. Don't let them be violent and actually hurt people. Of course not. Or animals or anything like that. And no, don't let them destroy your house. Okay? So you gotta have some discipline, of course, but there's a difference between, you know, discipline and boundaries and rules. Those things are necessary. But then just trying to crush them like the schools do. Hours and hours and hours and hours just sitting there studying boring, useless crap. That's horrible. Horrible. If you're a dad, you gotta stand up for your sons. You've gotta do it. You gotta fight for them. They can't do it at that age for themselves. Especially against all the fucking adults and bureaucrats and government people and other parents and all of that. You gotta stand up and fight for them. You know, you're a man and you know what's natural? You know, there's nothing wrong with them. So you gotta stand up and fight for them. If it's possible for one of you to stay home and teach them do homeschooling. If it's not, then find some other kind of way. Don't let this happen to your boys. Don't let this war on boys destroy them or turn them into little passive weaklings. And for everyone else out there, we also, we have to stand up for them. We got to fight for them. You got to say enough of this. Enough, enough, enough. All right, as Always, go to effortlessenglish club.com effortlessenglishclub.com get the text guide for this show and my past shows. See you next time. Bye for now.
