Aspen Times contributor Melanie Sturm was recently featured on Canto Talk to discuss her newest “Think Again” column, To Win War On Poverty, Close Male Gender Gap.

Host Silvio Canto, Jr. and I joined her in the discussion of how the anti-boy environment in grades K-12 is now translating to declines in enrollment and graduation rates for young men in colleges.

In part, she analyzed data presented in two books, “The War Against Boys,” by American Enterprise Institute scholar Christina Hoff Sommers, and “Men on Strike,” by psychologist Helen Smith.

Citing myriad studies, Sommers details how educational reforms and ideologies that deny gender differences have created hostile environments for rough-and-tumble boys, causing a serious academic achievement gap.

Out: structured, competitive, teacher-directed classrooms that best support boys’ learning; and outlets for natural rambunctiousness, including conflict-oriented play like cops and robbers. Last year, 7-year-old Coloradan Alex Smith was suspended for throwing an imaginary grenade at “bad guys.”

In: behavior-modifying drugs designed to make boys attentive and controlled.

Distressingly, boy-enthralling, job-directed schools — like Aviation High School in the Bronx, which specializes in teaching and graduating at-risk kids — are under assault because females are under-represented. Sommers laments that “male-specific interventions” — including masculine readings, single-sex learning opportunities, and teachers trained in boy-friendly pedagogy – “invites passionate and organized opposition” from feminist groups.

As young men disengage from school, alarming numbers are opting-out of post-secondary education, considered by Sommers the “passport to the American Dream.” Women disproportionately possess these passports, having earned post-secondary degrees in the following percentages: associate’s (62), bachelor’s (58), master’s (60), doctorates (52).

Expanding on Sommers’ argument, Smith taps into her counseling experience to explain that by opting-out of family life, risk-averse men are responding rationally to social institutions that offer fewer rewards and more costs.

The pendulum has swung too far, Smith argues, when male victims of statutory rape and paternity fraud are made liable for child support, or when collegiate men are assumed sexual predators before proven innocent (see the Duke Lacrosse case).

In essence, Sturm notes the “War on Poverty,” especially as it has expanded under the Great Recession, is best solved by closing the vast gender gap that the past four decades of educational policy have created.