I can sum up this issue by saying the big reason boys can't read is not being taught properly, and then the bad results are glossed over. It happens, you know, that children can be in the fourth grade, unable to read, but taking home A's on their report card. For me, that's criminally irresponsible, and what we need to correct ASAP.
www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/21018
“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”
That is a great point. I know lots of people who say they don’t like to read, but I don’t a know a single person who can read (and comprehend) quickly, who doesn’t like to read. The bulk of people who say they don’t enjoy reading simply do not have the skills to enjoy it.
If you want boys to like books, then use some boy books to teach them with, books about cowboys and indians and wars and heroes, books about building the nation’s trains and the use of riverboats, and the harvesting of fur and gold.
For some reason I am unable to access the article. The link will not deliver you to it. Do you have another one?
Never mind. Now I can see it. Weird.
Boys who don’t read have parents who don’t encourage reading.
Boys can’t read because they’re told by their teachers that girls are in control so “Sit down and shut the “f” up”. This prepares boys for the workplace where they’re quickly castrated and de-tongued as evil beings. Boys are slaves to their female slave masters who are owned by the Government who threatens to deny their children health care unless they do what they’re told. It’s a neat feudal lord kind of arrangement, whereby the Government ensures the threat of male resistance is neutralized.
“All the phonics people say that the very process of memorizing these words will prevent the child from becoming a good reader.”
Sorry, but:
a) Citing the opinion of a group that actively dislikes “sight-word” reading, and pushes a method that makes money for some of these people, as being scientifically valid is irresponsible.
b) Making an absolute statement like that (re the phrase “will prevent”) is a good way to utterly discredit any point you were trying to make, because if your premise is founded on that absolute, then *anything*, even a single example, that refutes the absolute statement then refutes the premise . Case in point: Me. I learned by sight-word reading, learned very early, and wildly outstripped my peers, many of whom were taught using phonics, in reading ability i.e. reading at a 5th-grade or so level in Kindergarten, and well beyond high-school level by 6th grade.
Now, if the article had pointed to a study by a neutral group that showed that sight-word reading methodology resulted in higher rates of illiteracy than phonics, it might be a different matter, but that’s not the case here.
Ping for later reading
And, before anyone claims that I might not remember things correctly, my mother was a teacher, and therefore knew exactly what kinds of methods were used for teaching reading, and has told me straight out that I learned using the sight-reading method, not phonics.
And yes, I am male.
when did this change? all my guy friends read voraciously, none of my girlfriends do- alot of them have a hard time getting thru simple teens novels like ‘twilight.’
admittedly alot of the reading we do is stephen king and tolkien, and other sci-fi, fantasy and horror stuff, but we’ve also read rand, orwell, machivelli, tsu, verne, wilde, dickens.. and its gotta be a shock for “educated” boomers to walk into a bar and see a bunch of tattooed and pierced guys discussing classic novels.
I don’t have any research to back me up, but I have had several hundred boys during the past decade come into my classroom with a disgust for reading.
The author is absolutely correct. My reading list is filled with things like the Iliad and Odyssey, Dracula, UFO stories, Bigfoot tales... and once they get past the language, Macbeth is a favorite, especially that last page. My son is a perfect example. I started him out reading my old X-Men comics, starting with issue 171 and reading every night until we got to issue 305, then moving on to some other graphic novels, with a few print-only stories inbetween, as well as the Guiness Book of World Records, science magazines, and so forth. Now he reads his World of Warcraft comics and magazines and short stories and wants more.
In the meantime, his (female) teacher won’t let him read graphic novels because they’re “too gory.”
Favorite anecdote confirming what the author says: A freshman boy came up to me once and told me, “I’m really sick and tired of all those Amazon girl stories.”
Interestingly, the girls will read anything put in front of them, which they usually finish early, then pass notes talking smack about each other or write their names dozens of times with expansive flourishes across the paper (why, I have no idea - I’ve just seen it happen).
The subtext is clear, and it isn’t pretty. We just ignore our boys and their needs. That chicken will come home to roost someday, if it already hasn’t.
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.
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.