How to Raise Boys Who Read (WSJ)

[Bostonian]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704271804575405511702112290.html

By THOMAS SPENCE

Wall Street Journal

September 24, 2010

 

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According to a recent report from the Center on Education Policy, for example, substantially more boys than girls score below the proficiency level on the annual National Assessment of Educational Progress reading test. This disparity goes back to 1992, and in some states the percentage of boys proficient in reading is now more than ten points below that of girls. The male-female reading gap is found in every socio-economic and ethnic category, including the children of white, college-educated parents.

The good news is that influential people have noticed this problem. The bad news is that many of them have perfectly awful ideas for solving it.

Everyone agrees that if boys don't read well, it's because they don't read enough. But why don't they read? A considerable number of teachers and librarians believe that boys are simply bored by the "stuffy" literature they encounter in school. According to a revealing Associated Press story in July these experts insist that we must "meet them where they are"—that is, pander to boys' untutored tastes.

 

For elementary- and middle-school boys, that means "books that exploit [their] love of bodily functions and gross-out humor." AP reported that one school librarian treats her pupils to "grossology" parties. "Just get 'em reading," she counsels cheerily. "Worry about what they're reading later."

 

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Education was once understood as training for freedom. Not merely the transmission of information, education entailed the formation of manners and taste. Aristotle thought we should be raised "so as both to delight in and to be pained by the things that we ought; this is the right education."

"Plato before him," writes C. S. Lewis, "had said the same. The little human animal will not at first have the right responses. It must be trained to feel pleasure, liking, disgust, and hatred at those things which really are pleasant, likeable, disgusting, and hateful."

This kind of training goes against the grain, and who has time for that? How much easier to meet children where they are.

One obvious problem with the SweetFarts philosophy of education is that it is more suited to producing a generation of barbarians and morons than to raising the sort of men who make good husbands, fathers and professionals. If you keep meeting a boy where he is, he doesn't go very far.

 

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The appearance of the boy-girl literacy gap happens to coincide with the proliferation of video games and other electronic forms of entertainment over the last decade or two. Boys spend far more time "plugged in" than girls do. Could the reading gap have more to do with competition for boys' attention than with their supposed inability to focus on anything other than outhouse humor?

 

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I offer a final piece of evidence that is perhaps unanswerable: There is no literacy gap between home-schooled boys and girls. How many of these families, do you suppose, have thrown grossology parties?

[thescrappyhomeschooler]

Well, my boys did attend a grossology class at the local Children's Museum and loved it. Boys do love gross stuff. And (*GASP*), I'm not totally against them reading some twaddle every now and again. They love the Star Wars books, the Pokemon books, etc., because they are very limited in their screen time, so through the books, they can relate to the other kids in their Sunday school class, Cub Scouts, on the playground, etc., when they are talking about Star Wars and the like.

 

For read alouds and assigned reading, I choose much different and IMHO and better written texts. They love hearing and reading classic children's literature and new, well-written literature. Just because they read some twaddle, doesn't mean they don't appreciate the good stuff.

 

I think the point is to get the boys away from the video games and more focused on reading. I've seen my nephew go from 24/7 video game playing to enjoying reading because of Eragon and the Percy Jackson books.

[DarcyB]

Thanks for that. A good read.

 

and fwiw..some girls like gross stuff, too :)

[DarcyB]

For read alouds and assigned reading, I choose much different and IMHO and better written texts. They love hearing and reading classic children's literature and new, well-written literature. Just because they read some twaddle, doesn't mean they don't appreciate the good stuff.

 

 

 

I think the point is more in the saturation of the twaddle that's the issue. When boys only read twaddle, they can't train their brains to want more much less ask for more. So between video games, comics, bad reading..how do we train them to begin to love more?

[Jane in NC]

 

I offer a final piece of evidence that is perhaps unanswerable: There is no literacy gap between home-schooled boys and girls. How many of these families, do you suppose, have thrown grossology parties?

 

Interesting. I thought that this last bit was a comment you were making. Rather, it is indeed the way the column ends.

 

About the grossology parties: perhaps some of us avoided the popular "gross" kid lit for mythology which has its own base appeal. Two of my son's favorite books from high school were Inferno and Canterbury Tales. In middle school the young barbarian enjoyed Ivanhoe and Beowulf. Blood and adventure won him over as did humor (The Importance of Being Earnest). I could never convince my son to try Jane Austen. But he loved Pride, Prejudice and Zombies.

[elegantlion]

 

For elementary- and middle-school boys, that means "books that exploit [their] love of bodily functions and gross-out humor." AP reported that one school librarian treats her pupils to "grossology" parties. "Just get 'em reading," she counsels cheerily. "Worry about what they're reading later."

 

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This is truly sad. My ds is not a big reader and he is a delayed reader. Finding material that inspires him and is at his level has been a challenge, but there are plenty of quality options.

 

He is exactly the type of student that would be handed these gross-out books. I find that irritating. Instead I've worked hard to have books at home, so we aren't grabbing titles we know nothing about from the library. He has a high comprehension and we do read-alouds above his reading level. In the recent past we've enjoyed King Arthur, Robin Hood, even Fahrenheit 451 (no potty humor there!). He stretched himself this spring and read two books well over 300 pages. It took him months to finish both, but they were quality literature, not twaddle.

 

This is one of the reason I like a series like Percy Jackson. It may not be high literature, but it is written so the average tween can read it and LEARN something. It's not full of immature behavior.

 

I've always been a reader, I don't remember a point in my life when I couldn't read well. To watch my son be NOT interested in reading has been somewhat painful. He loves to be read to and I plan to do that through high school.

 

It seems children are asked to read so MANY books that slow readers get left behind. Our library has a two week checkout period. Unless the book is at a lower reading level and under 100 pages my son can't even get through the book in two weeks! Honestly, I'd rather my son read fewer quality books and take longer, which is one of the reasons I own a lot of books.

 

Sorry, I've written a book, but I get extremely irritated by attitudes that convey our boys are incapable of learning just because they're boys. :glare:

[dkholland]

Having four dss who are readers, I can speak to this issue :). For us some factors in making readers is that my husband and I are readers. Our boys see us reading constantly - newspapers, magazines, books- and discussing what we read. It's just or lifestyle. No TV during the school week helps because sometimes there is just not anything else to do in the evening so the boys pick up a book.

 

Another help in raising boys that read is to read aloud...alot...when they are young. We started with the oldest and read, and read, and read. The others were listening in while they were playing. We added in more kiddos and they too listened in. You can make almost anything exciting by reading it aloud. Our boys also loved to "listen" to books on tape and Adventures in Odyssey. so they were brought up knowing how to listen. I think from that, they learned that reading can be exciting and even though a book may have hard vocabulary, you can get the jist of it by context of the sentence...KWIM?

 

These are the things we have done without knowing we were doing it and now we have four dss who read - almost too much! I have to kick them off the couch and make them go outside to skateboard or whatever. We also still read aloud even though on ds has left for college and the other three range from 9-15 yrs. We certainly are perfect homeschoolers in anyway, but our dss are very different temperments and personalities and they READ! I truly believe that this would be true even if we chose to send them to PS.:tongue_smilie: