You nailed it TC. Get them out of there and into a high activity weekend, lots of running, jumping, swimming, whatever, get them out, get them active and let them by god BE boys.
There needs to be a national movement on this front, but I have no clue how to go about starting something even locally.
We need to start changing the attitude of parents one set at a time. Get them to see the light of what's happening to their boys. Get the lads off of the drugs and onto vitamins and good food. Lots of exercise, activities and fun things to do. They need that after sitting in a boring classroom 8 hours a day.
I know I certainly did lol.
There's the Boy Scouts, of course :-). Unfortunately, too many boys who would really benefit from Scouting don't even get to try it.
It's frustrating to me to watch many of the "schooled" boys, because I know that educating a boy is not that hard. My oldest son is hyperactive, second son is "autism spectrum." Both are at grade level or above in their education, with at most two or three hours a day of serious work on it. For the rest, lots of exercise, a low-sugar diet, yard work, home maintenance, all the reading they want, and as many campouts as they can get.
Boys will want to read if you give them books with heroes and conflict, whether it's Greek myths, Shakespeare, or World War II. Of course they don't want to read books about victimized minority women and homosexuals -- neither do I!
It's encouraging that the "mainstream" is noticing that boys often aren't doing well, but it's unfortunate that men aren't stepping up to fix it. Often the point of the articles seems to be "See! We're victims too! Nyah nyah nyah!" I'm sorry, but that doesn't help!
I don't think you need to start anything other than finding the nearest troop of Boy Scouts and getting involved in making sure they have regular outings that do exactly what you describe -- let them be boys. Of course, if there isn't a troop that meets your needs, then you might have to look into starting one.