When Boys Don’t Read, Here’s What To Do

EdArticles.com ^ | April 5, 2010 | Bruce Deitrick Price

[BruceDeitrickPrice]

I like it when the New York Times agrees with me. Nicholas Kristof’s recent column “Boys have fallen behind” (April 4) is an exact echo of my column on CanadaFreePress several weeks earlier (March 15).

My piece was titled “Our Schools Are Skilled At Making Sure Boys Don’t Read." It’s longer, more aggressive, with more suggestions on how to deal with this very huge problem, namely, that boys don’t read well or they don’t read at all.

If boys not reading is an aspect of your life, please see this article. [Link at end.]

Now I want to mention the big difference between my article and the one in the Times. Kristof earnestly discusses several theories about why boys can’t seem to keep up with girls. It’s very helpful to discuss these theories, and as much as I like mocking the New York Times, Kristof deserves credit for that.

But Kristof doesn’t mention the essential problem, which is that reading methods used in public schools are often ineffective and destructive. Specifically, the Education Establishment still pushes sight-words and Dolch words. All the phonics people say that the very process of memorizing these words will prevent the child from becoming a good reader. So you see the crime is being committed in plain sight.

Let’s say a boy is 10 or 12 years old and he doesn’t like to read. You don’t actually know whether he is avoiding books as a matter of preference, or he is unable to use books as a matter of never having been properly taught. This is a HUGE distinction...

[SHORT ARTICLE CONCLUDES BELOW]

[Erasmus]

I was stunned in school to learn that there were books that were boring and unreadable, and that the female English teachers were fascinated with them and wanted us all to read them and be graded solely on them.

Sounds like your teacher had a case of Edna St. Vincent Malaise.

[exhaustguy]

Eleven 4.0 last semester in my daughter’s class and only one boy, and that boy is borderline autistic (very smart, talented musician but unable to function very well socially).

Actually the girl athletes are lionized as well. You are seen as weird if you don’t participate in sports (my daughters, alas, are blessed with my genetics and have absolutely no hope in competitive sports).

I don’t know how many “bookish” boys are in my daughter’s class. She is not aware of any. At that age I was reading everything (to the detriment of my school work). My oldest has a better balance, but my youngest is just like me.

At two of our state universities they have Women in Science and Medicine conferences, and I am taking both my daughters to them, but I think they are no longer necessary (it should be open to both boys and girls). With the medical school classes being 50% women why continue the proactive steps?

[panthermom]

Give me a break....I have 3 boys, my middle son has fantastic reading comprehension...always has but he hates to read...in fact all three of my boys go until they hit the bed.....they don’t even watch t.v. or play video games......they prefer to be outside doing physical things, when they stop moving they hit the bad with a thud.

[panthermom]

BTW, my husband and I are book junkies....we’re always reading.

[aruanan]

At that age I was reading everything (to the detriment of my school work).

It looked like it would be this way with me all the way through high school, but it turned out on the ACT and later on the GRE that all that reading far in excess of anything ever required by school courses helped quite a bit.

[Chickensoup]

I dont think that is as true as it used to be. People with homes with thousands of books, think mine and my friends, have children who are move visual arts oriented and watch tv and film and computer.

my biggest reader is a child who is an auditory learner and who listens to books on tape. he goes through a couple a week.

[exhaustguy]

I remember my teachers getting on my case for reading Edgar Rice Burroughs, but I recently picked up my old copy of Tarzan of the Apes(trying to get my daughter to read it), and I was pleased to note the vocabulary and word usage. Kids could learn alot from reading the 19th and early 20th century classics. Actually Tarzan gets a pretty high Lexile score (1270). The highest Harry Potter is a 1030.

Call of the Wild is 1170. White Fang is 970. What is the heck are these retold books - why retell a classic.

[Chickensoup]

We must be soulmates. I read constantly in school, at home and inbetween. I still read substantialy. School books..blech!

[HamiltonJay]

My son has been diagnosed with Mild dislexia and had focusing issues we had to have to have therapy for to get his eyes to work together better.

Still even before both the diagnosis and the treatment my wife and I got him reading, it was hard, required a lot of effort on our part, and yes even hooked on phonics to get him to be able to read on par with his peers.. but what got him to actually enjoy reading?

I handed him a copy of “Dragonlance Chronicles” and watched him tear through all 3 volumes like a starving man at a banquet. He wanted to watch the DVD movie of this so badly, and I told him, nope, can’t watch the movie until you read the book... Since then, he has been a rather voracious reader.

Hand a child that knows how to read a book that actually captures their interests and imagination, and they will read if you get rid of the other distractions.

I won’t say everything he reads is great literature, but he reads actively things he is interested in. I even have to take him to the bookstore every so often so he can buy the next book in a series he likes or new book in something else.

His latest favorite has been the Percy Jackson series, hes read the entire thing through like 4 times now.

Now my main goal is to work with him on reading to learn how to do things, as compared to being shown how... believe it or not, this is a skill many people don’t have. They can read quite well, and they can follow instructions and or mimic a shown behavior quite well, but taking printed words into action in something new to them, many people aren’t naturals at.

[exhaustguy]

It did me as well. I got a scholarship from my ACT (which was much higher than my GPA would indicate). That is one of the reasons I am trying to push my girls to read some of those early 20th century pulps - they will expand their vocabulary tremendously. My youngest has agreed to be homeschooled in English and Social Studies next year - boy is she in for a surprise (they only read two “novel” length books in 7th grade for the entire year - it is insane). My daughter read both of them as a 6th grader each in about a night or two.

Since the Social Studies will be Ancient Civilizations (to the collapse of Rome) and Geography, I am setting up a ready plan to support this study. So far on my list:

Ben Hur
Oedipus Rex
Odyssey (she wants to read because of Percy Jackson)
Biographies of Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar
Selected passages out of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar
Hamilton’s Mythology (maybe Bulfinch’s instead)
Shelly’s Ozymandius and other selected relevant poetry
The Bible (in particular the OT related to Israel’s interactiions with the Egyptians, Assyrians, and Babylonians)
A description of the final destruction of Jerusalem by Titus
A book on the early Christian church
Something about Constantine

[GenXteacher]

no passing grades was usually met with the strap when you got home.

But along with those “incentives” - and they may still do it, I don’t know...my youngest is 40 - we read aloud in class everyday, all the way through school. If you didn’t read well you were sort of embarassed in front of your classmates.

Those sort of incentives haven’t been done in years....if it were, my job would be more pleasant. All that self-esteem crap.... That, and embarassed? Many of todays teens would make hardened criminals from the ‘50s blush with some of the things they say (out loud, in class, to the teacher...)

[GenXteacher]

I think a lot of boys are taught that scholarship is unmanly, myself. Who are their role models? Some moron who chases a ball around? Some straight-up thuggin’ a-hole with his pants sagged around his ankles and a hood ornament around his neck? Or some jerkwater who is mommy’s boyfriend of the week whose chief concern in life is intoxication and orgasms, perhaps.... I’m not sure that reading methodology can overcome this sort of thing.

[Secret Agent Man]

They’ve kicked out a lot of good male teachers. When I was in school there were a lot of male teachers still, great role models for my science and math and journalism classes. Even our orchestra leader was a good guy.

But less and less good men teaching in the classroom has a huge impact on young boys and men.

[aruanan]

My youngest has agreed to be homeschooled in English and Social Studies next year - boy is she in for a surprise (they only read two “novel” length books in 7th grade for the entire year - it is insane).

Ha ha ha. That'll be interesting to see. My brother and his wife have homeschooled their four kids. They're all FAR beyond what anyone would be doing in public school. And they can actually carry on sustained conversations on a variety of topics without any annoying verbal clutter of "like," "ya know," "fer real," etc.

Only 2 books? The best thing for me was when we moved to a small town with a library within walking distance. I read about a book a day. Later, in Ann Arbor, in 8th grade my English teacher told me in front of the class that I was lying when I gave her a stack of index cards with some of the books I had read. She said that someone my age couldn't have read that many. I told her to pick any and I'd give her a synopsis.

[Elsiejay]

The “chickification” of America has long been the modus operandum of all culturally normalizing institutions; government, (that which passes for)education, entertainment, et cetera.
In virtually every retail business, restaurant, public service office or bank I enter I am served almost exclusively by females. Not very many years ago bank tellers, loan officers, financial advisers, etc, were men. Today I am surprised, almost shocked upon seeing a male teller or officer in a bank. Where are young men employed today? How do they earn a living? More than half of students in colleges/universities are females, and for good reason. For decades the not so subtle message has been that more and more female students are wanted. The other side of that coin can not have been lost on young men. They are not stupid, even as implicitly they are tagged un-needed, sociologially.

[BruceDeitrickPrice]

What seems to be the pattern is that the smarter kids, no matter how they are taught, will work their way through to phonics.
You may have been started with whole word, as I believe I was, but in a few years, you’re seeing the sounds inside the words.
It’s actually an interesting question whether anyone ever learns to read with sight-words. Maybe a few kids with near-photographic memories and willingness to work very hard for many years (compare learning Chinese).
What most kids, the ordinary kids, learn is to be functionally illiterate. We have 50,000,000 of them.
Google “42: Reading Resources” for a lot more.

[BruceDeitrickPrice]

“I was stunned in school...”
One of history’s great comments. Thanks. That’s what my article is about, but I needed more words.

[Little Pig]

Actually, I would posit Chinese, Japanese, and the other East Asian ideogram languages as evidence that phonics is unnecessary. In all those languages, symbols and sounds are completely unlinked, as the language has a very limited set of sounds, and inflection and context play a big part in conveying meaning. In other words, it is impossible to “sound out” the components of a given word, such as the chinese word “ma”, which depending on inflection, can mean “mother”, “horse”, “scold” (verb), and several others (each written with a completely different single ideogram). And yet, Asians in general outperform U.S. students in academics in all areas, which would be impossible to do without a strong foundation in comprehending written material. I’m not saying phonics doesn’t have a place in education, but to claim it’s going to fix, or even substantially improve, all the problems kids have with learning to read is naive at best.

[Ax]

I am a brave of 67 summers. My parents encouraged me to read, often to the detriment of my other studies. While in high school, I was introduced to Shakespeare, but I usually had some type of adventure novel going at home. I read voraciously in the military and really only stopped reading books when I discovered “Books on Tape,” so I can carry on “reading” while I’m exercising every day. It opened up a whole world to me; kids who don’t are depriving themselves of some free travel around the world.

[mrsixpack36]

I would be scared to go into the profession. If you don't give Suzie an "A" she knows all she has to do is say "Mr. Smith looked up my skirt/touched me there!" and his career is over. Also, as a product of the public schools, they just don't push teaching degrees to males like they do females. And of course, 95% of all male teachers at my school doubled as the Football coach/baseball coach, whatever. The history class they are supposed to teach was always secondary.