Where Are the Young Men?

When you visit classrooms at the Canada Institute of Linguistics (CanIL), you quickly notice that the number of young men pales in comparison to young female students. Here is an excerpt from a Word Alive magazine (WAM) interview with CanIL president, Dr. Mike Walrod, addressing this issue.

Walrod: “ . . . we need to be really diligent about recruiting young men because the young men nowadays in North America are under attack and it’s just tougher and tougher for them to follow the Lord. So, we aren’t getting as many [male students] as we probably were historically. Some of my buddies who are leaders in Bible schools are telling me the same thing. Where are the young men? They’re not showing up.”

WAM: So you feel that there is something that is ingrained into our culture that is somehow demoralizing young men?

Walrod: I think there are a number of things. There’s the Internet and all the stuff that goes along with that. There’s the junk on T.V. There’s also a mindset that has virtually a deliberate political agenda to get guys not to be manly in their decision making processes and shouldering responsibility. This tells them, “Don’t try to do that, or we’ll pull the rug out from under you if you do.”

WAM: Do you think there seems to also be this tendency to ridicule men as sort of the butt of jokes and putdowns?

Walrod: Exactly, that’s exactly what I’m talking about. I think it is a deliberate agenda. You used to have T.V. programs like Father Knows Best. Sure, father could have made a mistake, but somehow he came out looking like a wise man in the end—and a good man. Well, nowadays you don’t have those role models on T.V. You have nincompoops, and their kids and their spouses are just going about the business of relegating this person [the father] to significant derision.

It sure feels like there is a strong need to recruit, to be very deliberate and intentional about recruiting young men to the extent we need to. Also to be involved in mentoring and discipling young men. We need to be prepared to do that here as well.

WAM: Why is a male language worker’s role in a field context important? Are there cultural implications there?

Walrod: Well, yeah, very often there are societies where women tend to be devalued and cannot hold important positions in a community, positions of leadership. So, for a single woman then to come into that community, and to try and organize a committee of local people [for language work and translation], and to try to facilitate that process and interact with them, more or less as a peer in shaping an agenda, can be very difficult indeed.