Posted on 11/08/2010 7:39:06 AM PST by Immerito
How to Raise Boys Who Read Hint: Not with gross-out books and video-game bribes.
By THOMAS SPENCE
When I was a young boy, America's elite schools and universities were almost entirely reserved for males. That seems incredible now, in an era when headlines suggest that boys are largely unfit for the classroom. In particular, they can't read.
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."
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
If my kids are reading, they can stay up late. If they’re reading, I will unload the dishes or do whatever else it was I was about to have them do. My girl reads 1,000 books a day. The boy not as much but still quite a bit.
I recently read a review of a Freddy the Pig book. Some of this series is back in reprint and they seem to get boys (maybe girls also) interested in reading. There is also a Freddy the Pig fan club for youngsters.
My kids would have preferred you over me.;) I didn’t let them skip chores.
Kipling’s poems, too. They are funny and very instructional, too.
I homeschool my 12 year old, I have forf the last 2 years. He absolutly hates to read..we have tried almost eveything to get him to read. I have read to both my kids since they were babies, and he seems to like when we read together as a family. He can read..just hates it. So I am going to go with post #6, and get him a subscription to something that interests him.
One thing that I have found gets kids interested is to read them the book or story that was transformed almost beyond recognition by the movie industry (take Pinocchio or Bambi, for instance).
When you get to the part where Pinocchio....well, I won’t spoil what happens within the first 20 pages. :-)
Oh, they LOVE me. I’m very much a Felix Unger type. I hardly ever let them do chores because their performance will never satisfy me. You know how it is — they move a glass from the machine to the drying towel and a drop of water falls to the floor. Can’t have that, you know.
I remember reading my daughter a book about a little boy who had no interest in reading at school. (Actually it was a book about the cat who lived at the bookstore. True story from Maine BTW) So his mother took him to the book store, where he finds a book about soccer, his favorite pastime. Eureka, boys will read books about subjects they are interested in.
....so do girls re: cats
Exactly. My wife and I read with and to both kids when they were little. Also I never said no to them if they wanted a book. I read constantly myself and our house is filled with books. Both my kids(1 daughter, 1 son) are avid readers.
Step 1: Turn off the television.
ping
My ten-year-old son is the most gun-crazy kid I’ve ever known, and I’ve known a few. I think he would rather sit and shoot pop cans with his .22 than eat. He’s an outdoorsy, kinetic kid who plays soccer, loves to hunt, fish, hike, and camp, and he’s the last kid in the world you’d expect to see with his nose in a book.
Not long after he started sounding out words, I introduced him to adventure stories... Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett, even Louis L’Amour westerns. Now he reads himself to sleep every night, and dreams of hunting elk and mountain lions.
I am more like a cheater housekeeper. Looking clean is as good as being clean. I could write a book of cheats. #1, teach the kids to do it and when it’s half baked, blame them :)
Turn off the TV.
Turn off the video games
Read aloud to your toddlers from day one. Every day a book.
Into amazon.com type in the follwing words:
“Backyard Ballistics”. It will give back a one year reading list for boys.
“The dangerous book for boys” will return a two or three year reading list for boys.
There are a lot of books that are geared for boys now.
Science Fiction is all good for guys. Thousands of titles to choose from and much of it is terrific writing.
It is just that easy.
One other thing:
if your son insists on reading under the covers with a flashlight, hassle him just enough to make him think that he is getting away with something special.
I’m afraid the author is either mistaken, or very fortunate. Not even a complete absence of electronics from the house—no Playstation or XBox, no computer games, not even a functional TV—will force a kid to start reading. I read to my kids from the time they came home from the hospital. We have thousands of fascinating books in our house, my children see me reading constantly, there are books and good magazines on every table and in every room except possibly the dining room, every bedroom has a bookcase or two. And no dice. My 16-year-old son has exactly ONE book he likes to read; my daughter doesn’t read for pleasure at all, except for Vogue. It amazes me.
I agree! Boys will not like Fancy Nancy or Strawberry Shortcake. When I was in the children’s section at the local bookstore, most books appeared to be oriented to girls.
As a British physician, Dalrymple cites cases of treating victims of brutal beatings by teens who did nothing more than score well on tests. For some reason in the U.K. it is cool to fail, anyone bucking the peer group gets savaged. Reading his works will make you despair for our education system.
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