Dear Friend of Frank,

On Nov. 3, I gave a presentation, “Getting Boys to Read,” to the Illinois School Library & Media Assn. (ISLMA) annual meeting in Springfield IL. It was enthusiastically received — as well it might be. After all, I had devoted two full weeks to its study.

Chutzpah, thy name is Frank.

Chutzpah aside, a lot of people — educators, parents, Bill Gates for God’s sake — are really worried about the decline in reading for pleasure, especially among boys. I am too, which is why I chose the topic (that and the fact that I knew it’d draw a good crowd, which it did).

I didn’t become an expert in two weeks, but I did learn some fascinating stuff, to wit:

• Girls can sit at a desk with their hands folded and learn learn learn, but boys tend to have ants in their pants. Many boys just need to move around, experience variety, get their senses stimulated. But in school — especially elementary school — kids are expected to maintain focus for long periods and information “is primarily presented in the same low-tech way that it has been for years – listening to a teacher talk or reading a book.” As one boy put it: “School is where you sit at a desk all day and listen to women talk.”

• Reading is gay. Boys will seize any opportunity to put down other boys as “sissies;” one common way they do it is to say reading is for sissies. I didn’t believe this until my friend Rich Weinfeld, a nationally recognized authority on these topics, told me boys deliver homophobic taunts 20-30 times every school day. Rich’s source: His own grade-school-age son.

• Corollary to reading-is-gay is the “boy code”: don’t cry, don’t ask for help, don’t reach out for comfort or reassurance, don’t show tenderness, etc. This has an impact on boys and learning. One of those books I read said: “With little or no practice in identifying and talking about their own emotions or emotions of others, boys tend to be at a loss to discuss what a character in a story or book they read was feeling.”

• Boys at age 5-6 may lag girls developmentally by as much as a year and a half. They are physiologically unready to read. But in many schools, especially public schools in elite neighborhoods full of go-getting rat-racing moms and dads, kindergarten is the new first grade and reading is the curriculum. Here’s what Leonard Sax MD, author of BOYS ADRIFT, had to say about that: “The first thing that happens when you ask kids to do stuff they have no interest in doing is they stop paying attention. … The second thing … is they get annoyed. They get irritable. They withdraw. ‘I hate school. It’s stupid.’ Anything associated with school becomes uncool. Reading is uncool.”

• Michael Gurian, author of THE MINDS OF BOYS, makes other fascinating developmental points:
– Boys differ genetically from girls by 1%-2% … the same difference that separates ALL humans from chimpanzees. (I got a big appreciative snicker with that one.)
– Boys’ bloodstreams carry more dopamine, a marker for impulsive behavior.
– The frontal lobes in boys’ brains develop later, a marker for poor executive decisionmaking.
– The language centers in boys’ brains develop later.
– The hormonal mix in boys’ bloodstreams favors aggression, sex, territoriality, hierarchy.
– Girls’ brains multitask better, boys’ brains compartmentalize better.

• Time was when boys and girls entered puberty around 12 or 13. No more, apparently — now some girls enter puberty up to three years earlier, whereas some boys don’t do so for as much as two years later. Imagine an eighth-grade class full of sexually mature women and sexually immature boys. Now imagine trying to learn anything. At all. [The reasons for these developmental differences are unclear, but Sax cites suspicious environmental causes including, of all things, the phthalate-based plastic that baby bottles are made of.]

What to do? In the classroom, boys do better when they can move around and “be boys.” They often like to act out what they read. They like being split into teams and making reading a competitive activity. They need role models — the Chicago Public Schools have a program, “Real Men Read,” that seeks to address this. All those things schools are cutting out as frills and frippery — recess, gym, art, music — are helpful in getting kids into the frame of mind to read, to learn. Gurian, quoting a teacher: “I began taking my class down to the gym and letting them run laps before our spelling tests. The boys especially showed marked improvement in their test grades.”

And boys appreciate choice. If they’d rather read about A-Rod than A TALE OF TWO CITIES, let ‘em. Throw the canon out entirely, at least until high school. Don’t ever force one more boy to read THE DEERSLAYER.

And never, never make them read JANE EYRE or PRIDE AND PREJUDICE. Boys won’t read about girls. Boys will read about boys. They will read about animals and robots too, if they’re boy-like … but not about girls. Girls will read about girls. Girls will read about boys. Girls will read about just about anything (this is not just me talking — educators confirm it) … but Boys. Will. Not. Read. About. Girls.

The point my presentation led up to was this: Boys — anyone, actually — respond to Story, Character, Voice, Situation, Plot, Conflict, Fair vs. Unfair, Good vs. Evil … all the good old things they teach us in writers’ workshops. Boys — all readers, actually — just want the author to grab them by the lapels and yank them headlong into the tale, then keep them so amused/confused/terrified/excited/rapt that they can’t stop turning the pages.

Frank Joseph
www.tolovemercy.com

P.S. Rich Weinfeld’s book HELPING BOYS SUCCEED IN SCHOOL [ISBN 1-59363-198-7] was a tremendous resource in preparing my ISLMA presentation — comprehensive, up-to-date, concise and eminently readable. It’s $16.95 but Amazon discounts it to $12.71. Click here: http://www.amazon.com/Helping-Boys-Succeed-School-Terry/dp/1593631987/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1196385405&sr=8-1

P.P.S.  This is my first blog in more than six weeks. I was totally tied up preparing for my Chicago trip, then even more tied up once I got there. I spoke at 10 schools, four bookstores, four public libraries, a book club and ISLMA, plus I interviewed 11 Hyde Park High School alumni as research for TO WALK HUMBLY, my novel-in-progress. Unbelievably great things happened in Chicago. Watch this space.