Boys are 30 percent more likely than girls to drop out of school. In Canada, five boys drop out for every three girls. Girls outperform boys now at every level, from elementary school to graduate school.

Zimbardo is pointing to a measurable, cross-national gap in educational persistence and achievement: boys are leaving school at higher rates while girls are excelling across successive tiers of education. The quote frames this not as an isolated classroom issue but as a systemic shift with long-term social consequences—affecting workforce readiness, economic stability, and identity formation for young men. Implicitly, it supports Zimbardo’s broader public argument that contemporary environments (school structures, cultural expectations, and especially digital distractions) may be mismatched to boys’ developmental needs, and that the “boy crisis” should be treated as a policy and cultural problem rather than a matter of individual failure.