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]

[jra]

Thanks...your post proves my point.

If you don’t insist that they read, they (most likely) won’t.

I’m not insinuating ANYthing about your parenting, so no need to get angry with me.

Point remains...if you don’t have reading goals that you uphold, kids usually won’t read.

[mrsixpack36]

Also, I know a few guys that have teaching degrees that cannot find a job, they tell me they always prefer the females. Sorry for my rants, I have a huge problem with the public schools and they are a sore subject with me.

[BruceDeitrickPrice]

One thing to keep in mind is how much the Education Establishment enjoys having smart citizens give them cover. Whoops, there goes another million illiterates.

Only the most scholarly Chinese can memorize even 20,000 of their symbols. Apparently a more normal number is well below 10,000. But English has a truly vast vocabulary. College kids need 100,000++ words. No human can memorize such a number. Furthermore, English words come lower case, UPPER CASE, script, etc.

For anyone who is curious what this avalanche of confusing graphic designs does to the brain, please Google “How Dolch Words Cause Illiteracy and Dyslexia,” a graphical video on YouTube. About 7 minutes but it tells the story well. (I have about ten videos about reading on YouTube.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCNDFTBkPBQ

[Little Pig]

Actually, most literate chinese know around 20,000 words, and many of those are made up of combinations of ideograms, and the combinations have to be memorized separately, since they combine ideograms that have different meanings when not combined. The Chinese language has around 60,000 separate characters, and the really scholarly know ~45,000. Yes, English may have over 100,000 words, but if you’re going to drag in capitalization and font, then that’s another issue altogether. Chinese words, for example, also have numerous written forms analogous to machine print, hand print, cursive, and even classical calligraphy (so-called “grass script”), as well as simplified and traditional versions in print form. Further, many of those English words 100,000 are technical terms or compounded from simpler terms, which can be inferred from their root words, or from context. Phonics only conveys sound. You still have to memorize the meaning. That having been said, the original argument stands that ideogram-based languages require far more memorization than alphabet-based languages, and yet that hasn’t impaired the learning of cultures that use those languages.

[Fiji Hill]

Thank you for stating this - our 6th grade son says he hates to read... but he has exceptions like the Bone series, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Geronimo Stilton, and some others (mostly comic book type) but he is not allowed to read them in school because they are comic books. So he only reads them at home. He also likes to read through his Sports Illustrated Kids. I thought it did not matter what they read as long as they were reading.

Some of the crap they give for reading and testing is absolutely horrible and very girl-centric with bizarre names that you spend half the time trying to figure out how to pronounce.

You might see if your library has anything by Stephen Meader, who wrote many books for boys from 1920 to 1969. His books are easy to read and fast-paced, and their main characters provide success-oriented role models. Meader stopped writing such books after 1969 when sex, drugs, and street gangs began to show up in "young adult" literature, and he refused to change with the times.

Many of Meader's books have become collector's items, but they have been all been reissued by Southern Skies. They are also available at some public libraries.

An Old Fashioned Education has links to classic for boys as well as old series fiction that is available for free in digital form online. This site also has links to books that appeal to girls.