Shocking insight - boys and girls are different

It was published a few days ago in a number of newspapers around the country, but syndicated columnist David Brooks's column "Biological differences key to addressing boys' underachievement" is a fun read - and important. He writes:

It could be, in short, that biological factors influence reading tastes, even after accounting for culture.

Yeah, well, duh. 

Ask any practicing librarian if boys and girls like different kinds of books. Even back in the dark ages of education when I was in college, University of Iowa professor G. Robert Carlson (Books and the Teenage Reader) flatly stated "Girls will read boy books (and books with male protagonists), but boys won't read girl books." Check out the work of Jon Scieszka at Guys Read.

Identifying, acquiring and promoting library materials of particular interest to our Y-chromosome crowd has been a serious challenge for school and young adult librarians over the past few years. Once again, librarians are ahead of the curve!

Personally, I have always been bothered by the discrimination against reading quality, literate non-fiction in schools. Seems like most reading assigned is either a deathly dull textbook passage or "sensitive" fiction. You want guys to read? You need to provide (and not stigmatize) adventure, action, plot and facts!

 Brooks concludes:

During the 1970s, it was believed that gender is a social construct and that gender differences could be eliminated via consciousness-raising. But it turns out gender is not a social construct. Consciousness-raising doesn't turn boys into sensitively poetic pacifists. It just turns many of them into high school and college dropouts who hate reading. 

30% of today's freshman will drop out of school before graduation. Is it because we make them read "girls'" books?

Comments

[Miguel Guhlin]

An avid reader middle school through now (near middle-age), I definitely agree that I have different reading interests than girls! While I can now read books with heroines, I distinctly remember skipping them. And, who wants to read about social justice issues that are now foisted on kids and parents have to sign a permission slip for?

Non-fiction is sometimes interesting, but I'm looking for action/adventure fiction ranging from sci-fi to westerns to Stephen King/Dean Koontz horror.

Maybe if reading weren't so sanitized--hmm, this reminds me of use of social networking tools in schools today conversation--kids might be more engaged. In the meantime, I encourage my children to not read on grade level. Instead, read what interests them and find a story that's a page-turner.

And, to heck with Accelerated Reader.

Ok, that sums it up!

;->

An avid reader for the last

Miguel

[Vicki Davis]

We've worked hard at our school to add books that are more interesting to boys with great results. Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn was a real winner with the boys. It is a man's world in many ways but really it is a world with two genders and the reading material should reflect the make up of the world,not the gender tendencies of English teachers who pick the books! If we want boys to be engaged, we should encourage it! My son loves many books different than I but most of them are about action/ adventure and not about how people feel. He needs to read those books but if he is forced to read only that type of book, we will hate reading!

We've been so politically correct about the gender thing that we've forgotten that there are some differences. I am afraid that we'll swing the other way, however and create different gender classrooms. I was the girl who liked robots, computers, science experiments and action novels and I would have been out of place in a a girls only classroom! My how the pendulum swings!