A Louisiana high school discovered that having students’ fathers on campus worked wonders when it came to stemming fights between boys.
SO WHAT
Amid liberal hand-wringing over “toxic masculinity” and the patriarchy, the benefits of strong male presences have often been overlooked.
WHAT HAPPENED
After 23 students were arrested for fighting over a period of three days last month, parents at Southwood High School in Shreveport banded together to form Dads on Duty – a group of roughly 40 fathers who take turns spending time at the school.
The program’s been a wild success: zero incidents have taken place since the dads started showing up, CBS News reported on Friday.
- “I immediately felt a form of safety,” one of the students told CBS. “We stopped fighting; people started going to class.”
- Another partially attributed the dads’ “power” to their stern stares: “”You ever heard of ‘a look?,'” she said.
- Dads on Duty participants say they have no plans to stop showing up at Southwood and even want to expand the program to other schools in Louisiana.
“Because not everybody has a father figure at home – or a male, period, in their life. So just to be here makes a big difference,” the dads told CBS.
THE COMMENTARY
On Twitter, many users reacted to CBS’ report, which has more than 11 million views on the social media platform, by highlighting the importance of fathers and male role models.
Anthony Bradley, a professor of religion at Kings College in New York City, accused progressives of downplaying the impact of fatherhood on societal ills, saying “Solutions call for *more* masculinity, not less.”
