Who Says Boys Don't Like to Read and Write?
Vox Day, the Christian libertarian writer and blogger sent me a copy today of his son Christopher's new book, "This and Last Season's Excursions." It is an imaginative children's book that shares some wonderful adventures of a boy and his animals. What is most amazing is that Christopher wrote this book last year when he was six years and four months old. He may possibly be the youngest male author but this has not been verified yet. Anyway, go by and check out Christopher's website that tells more about the book and about Christopher. I think more boys would enjoy reading and writing if they were encouraged to read and write about things that held their interest, as opposed to what librarians and teachers give them on a reading list. Christopher is homeschooled; I wonder if boys who are homeschooled enjoy reading more than those who go to public schools?
posted by Helen at 11:26 AM
31 Comments:
Here's an experience from student teaching in a sixth grade class. The state mandates a certai minimum period of tiem per week for reading. there was one very bright student for whom this was toture - he didn't like reading, it was boring yadda yadda.. So on a dare I gave him a (US) Army Fiiled Manula on Soviet Army tactics (the cooperating teacher was very cool, a real gem) I had myself had never been able to read mora than a page at a time of this rather dry stuf. At the end of the hour he had to be told three times to put it away and move on.
i think this article is dead on the money that teachers and librarians please themselves with the reading selection. I know they are not favoring the girls either, who don't much like Where The Red Fern Grows either. OTOH teenaged girls were one of the biggest audiences for Troy, and it wasn't all just Brad Pitt bare ass. They said they liked to see people driven by a sense of honor, even when those peole fail. Kids that age like the Iliad and that kind of thing. And LOTR.
My son will be 7 in just a few weeks. He absolutely hated the "reader" books. I really had a hard time getting him to read them to me.
However, I have recently found several series that he absolutely loves. TIME for Kids, Barron's Get Ready...Get Set...Read! series, and the DK Readers are all proving to be winners with my first grader.
Right now, we're reading Dinosaur Dinners, a DK Reader book. It's all about what different dinosaurs ate, and how you can tell by their physical characteristics. These books have terrific pictures, and the reading isn't dull and boring.
My son loves to read, but something someone told him at school almost destroyed his love for reading.
My son has mild to moderate hearing loss, inherited from me, and he also had fluid in his ears quite often when he was learning language. Because he has been learning to say words all over again, he is very careful when he reads, so that he can say his words perfectly.
This woman told my son that he couldn't read as well as the other boys and girls, and since he likes to do well in things, he didn't want to read anymore.
Finally, I got tired of trying to make him read to me, and I made him tell me what was wrong. I wanted to know why he didn't want to read anymore, when previously, it was one of his favorite things to do. He broke down in tears when he told me that he "was no good at it" and that he "didn't know as many words as the other boys and girls". Needless to say, I cried, too.
He never would tell me who told him that. Good thing for her!
My son is now a terrific reader, and has near perfect scores on all his tests.
Last year, we had a first year teacher. This year, his first grade teacher is a 30+ year veteran of the first grade trenches. It makes all the difference in the world! She knows all about handling the boys.
Deb
Memphis, TN
Deb,
Good for you! Thats'a great success story - you son is very fortunate. Luckily there is a lot out there for him to read. Unfortunately, he may never see any of it in school. You can make that into an advantage, since boys love to rebel. He can read all that stuff out of spite.
Practical note - hold off on the car magazines - that can turn into a very expensive interest.
Dr. HELEN !
Nice PJ photo by Insta Professor J.D.--but I digress
Ahhhh Homeschooling.
Big Surprise here eh ?
When we moved from two of the best public School districts in the country, in, Illinois, and later to Humble Texas USD, to one of THE WORST, Stockton USD, Stockton, CA.
4 small Children and after two or three years of Private School, the Math was obvious, we had to move to a different part of the country or Home School.
So the wife bought the Cadillac Curriculum in a Box,
5 years later, the kids were one to two years ahead of their peers.
They read and wrote very well.
We finally moved to the #1 public school district in CA, and were somewhat successful in integrating the kids back into Public School,
They were bored as hell for two years and the middle son begged to be home schooled again.
It finally worked out O.K. since the boys wanted to do "team sports" in High School and did very well.
The daughter is our "Compliant" wanted to please child, strait A's, Capt. of her LaCrosse team, now on her way to taking the MCATS and John Hopkins, Presbyterian St. Lukes, or UCSF Med School,
The Baby, she still struggles, She did K-12 in Cal. #1 Public School, and by some miracle got into UCSB as a ballet modern dance major.
The glue that held this leaky ship afloat thru alot of trials is strong practicing relgious faith.
The kids accepted it, rejected it, accepted it with a vengeance.
"Train up a child in the way he/she should go and when they are old they will not depart from it"
It works.
Econ-Scott
P.S. it goes on, the oldest owns a couple of businesses, still studies at least one course a semester at UC gettin' married soon to a surfer girl 1st Grade teacher from Cornwall England UK.
Second Son, got good Econ degree Background (that's me boy) working for 2nd largest fund group (soon) in a rotational management program.
Mrs. Econ & I getting to like this "empty Nest thing" tho startin next week they're all home at intervals til Jan.
Good that the boy likes to read & write.
His Parents probably read to him at an early age, clear marker of early love of Books.
Get him one of the BEST early "Boy Books" when he turns 9, "Men of Iron" by Englishman, Howard Pyle
http://classicreader.com/booktoc.php/sid.1/bookid.436/
All the best,
Econ_Scott
My homeschooled (7yo) boy has been reading since he was about 4 1/2. He mainly likes the Dragonball and DragonballZ series, but he also enjoys the Magic Treehouse, and anything related to weather. He hates to write anything. I try not to push him in a particular direction as far as children's literature right now since he is still so young, and I get disappointed when he doesn't enjoy what I do. I really want him to see all reading as enjoyable and not a boring task. My main problem at the moment is turning off his light at 3am because he stayed up so late reading.
I do like to caution people not to expect that a kid is going to be more advanced, or more polite or well-adjusted simply because they are homeschooled. Many kids are homeschooled because they have problems in academics or behavior and their parents feel that these issues would be better addressed at home. I also hear people speak on the other side of the issue. They see a mal-adjusted homeschooled kid, and believe the behavior is because of the homeschooling. Homeschoolers can be guilty of blaming every personality flaw in a public-schooled child on rowdy peers or neglectful parents. Sometimes a naughty kid is just a naughty kid.
Oh. And sometimes a smart kid is just a smart kid too:)
Michelle:
A naughty kid is just a naughty kid ?
Little Free moral agents ?
Some kids struggle, Impulsivity, busy parents, a bad teacher or principal early on, they would have been better off ridin' fence on grouchy Uncle Charlie's Ranch-- then start school at 9 or ten.
Econ-Scott
Middle son, had a very good friend growing up (played rythm guitar in the garage band) who now is a resident at San Quentin. We visit him once in a while. He was clearly troubled from kindergarten, and while he had good parents, as two physicians they were both really busy.
Dealt a Bad hand. This family needed two compliant kids, because that's all they had room for unless one parent cancelled a medical career and helped the troubled child who probably needed to be out of School and into a high activity trade/professional school.
It sure would have beat a lifetime of heartache and prison.
Wow, impressive...
I think most males do enjoy reading and writing. At least I know I do. I think the problem is many children are introduced to reading in school, and from the time they learn letters, they view it as work, and read to please, not for content.
I find myself often without a good novel, and often it is due to a lack of time. I have a busy life, and spend a lot of time a day doing school work. I am usually tired and don't see the point of picking up a book.
Then again, when I find one that I like and can really get into, I always seem to find more hours in a day.
I think it comes down to how one looks as reading, especially in their early life. If a child sees it as work, they probably won't end up loving it. If they see it as an enjoyable passtime, they will end up reading as a hobby. It all depends on the outlook.
~Will Conway
Econ-Scott,
Agree with you about the role of faith in raising children! Even if it doesn't seem to "take," it "formats their disk" to have a more sensitive conscience, a better perception of human dignity, and hence self worth as a child of God. One of my favorite Arc Angels songs is: "There's only one way to stand but too many ways to fall." Even with some stumbling, you do your best and hope they don't fall.
One of the most heartbreaking bad kid scenarios I know are of some family friends. Their only child, a son, shot and killed someone in cold blood because they took "his" parking spot at the mall. These parents were very fine and decent people and did everything right that was in their power; however, their only child is spending life in prison. My heart aches for them.
I have a very difficult nephew who could easily go bad, and he's behaved in such a way to get a lot of people to write him off. I refuse to do so. I was a bit of a JD in my teens, out of boredom and underchallenge. I don't get to see him often, but I always ensure that we get private time together so I can talk with him, asking him what his plans are, what he's been up to, girls he likes, etc. He's a senior in high school. My conversations with him have given him information to think about that led him to make some good decisions about what to do after high school. I fully support his plans 110% even though they aren't as high-falutin' and prestigious as is normally expected in our family. He wants to learn his way (technical, fix it, hands on) and do something productive to be self supporting in his specific agricultural region of the country. His choices are smart. I'm sure once he gets away from family conflict, stands on his own two feet, and achieves something out on his own, and is satisfied with it, the potential for negative outcomes will sharply decline. Hopefully he doesn't make destructive choices along the way, at least nothing that can't be restituted! LOL
So yes, dealt a bad hand, blame external forces etc., but as a child grows into adolescence and adulthood, he or she is totally responsible for his own actions and their consequences. Even if it's San Quentin.
God bless my mother for never letting me blame peer pressure! "Young lady, you are strong willed enough to make up your own mind. Don't blame your friends like you're some sheep, because you're not!" I heard that!
I was a voracious reader as a kid (my tolerance for bad material has gotten so low that I don't read a lot lately.) Even then, I was surprised at the 'tone deafness' so to speak of the reading lists created by librarians and teachers.
In ninth grade, I finally had an English teacher who pretty much let you read anything, though she would encourage some books over others. Guys that never read before actually got enthusiastic! (In eleventh grade I had an English teacher who explained all the vulgarity of Twelfth Night, which got even the worse drug addled kids enthusiastically involved, but that's a different story.)
A year or so ago, one of my kids brought home an "approved" reading list from school. It was terrible. It was heavily dominated by books written before 1980 and even then, it was missing dozens of great classics (like the Chronicles of Narnia.)
That same eleventh grade teacher from above had a student teacher that year in February. She made us read Green Mansions. It was excrutiating. In hindsite, it's clear this poor girl thought the book was the greatest ever and wanted to spread her insights with no regard to the tastes of teenagers or the point of teaching English. (After she left, the teacher stood and said, "We're going to pretend that month never happened." And it vanished from her gradebook--good thing since the highest score on the exam was a 55.)
Rowena "hellfire"
Due to hardwiring and his own choices this kid and trouble were meant for each other.
He had good parents, but he needed more.
He really needed a grouchy Uncle Charlie in Oklahoma, with a combo ranch and pea farm.
This kid needed alot of action, alot of work, and tough as nails MALE authority figures that would kick his ass when he needed it starting at age 4 or 5.
He also needed a kindly Aunt Lucille that dragged him to church 3 times a week and prayed for him, and taught him about sin and consequences, remorse, forgiveness and restitution.
too late for that now.
Tho it might have turned out the same, I doubt it.
He's in San Quentin.
As always, wishin U' & Yours,
All the Best
Econ Scott
I hated writing in elementary school--because it was all creative writing. I loved reading, though, including nonfiction, fantasy/adventure (the Redwall books were particularly good), the occasional bit of sci-fi. But I also went to an all-boys school for K-5, and I bet that helped a good bit with getting to read the right material. Our early social studies curricula ver pretty adventurous, including a great 4th grade whaling unit. Unfortunately, the all-boys school was terrible with discipline and social conditioning ("Boys will be Boys" became an excuse for serious harassment and physical abuse.)
But anyways, there is a severe bias to creative writing from elementary school teachers I've seen. It wasn't until I got an amazing 9th grade history teacher that I started to enjoy writing. And now, I plan to go into that highly persuasive-writing-filled career, patent litigation.
One thing stands out in these stories is the need for a range of options because kids present a range of personalities and learning styles and challenges. That means an extended family that is likelier than not to have someone who can read a kid that may baffle his parents, or a range of teachers who can covers each others' blindspots.
We have gone through a bad spell where reading selections have been all over the map. It wa sin reaction to an equally bad situation before; although we may have rosy recollections of reading the classics in high school, in real fact (I at least) read crap like the Red Pony only because Steinbeck was a Californian author. Of course, we couldn't have read Grapes of Wrath or anything worthwhile. We might have read Jack London at a younger age. But no......
Thre has been a push to get multicultural literature into the curriculum, but when you have illiterates doing the selection you get Joy Luck Club instead of just abyt anything in the 3,000 years of Chinese literature, or stuff by African American authors rather than you, know....Africans. Now Joy Luck Club is a great novel, but it is solidly and purely American, and it ought to be in American lit in high school. Anyway.
My parents had an odd tradition when shopping: The one thing we kids didn't have to pay for with our allowance was books.
Don't know if that made me the voracious reader I became, but it probably helped. Perhaps more important is that the first thing my father did after dinner every night was to settle into his easy chair and start reading something.
My daughter will be disappointed to learn that six-year-olds have been published. She is 12 and is working on getting some of her own writings published. Meanwhile, her public school English teacher is trying hard to persuade her and us that this isn't a good idea because it will give her a swelled head.
That's a distinct possibility, but I don't think the cure is to discourage her from doing anything remarkable.
Hey, I wrote an article i think you might like...
http://fallingdominos.blogspot.com/2006/12/i-was-lucky-enough-to-interview-one-of.html
Econ-Scott
When I said "sometimes a naughty child is just a naughty child", and the same for smart children, I was cautioning against people defining the child's behavior by whether they are homeschooled or not. Perhaps the young author would have written his book even while attending public Kindergarten.
Okay. Here I go...
I hear so many homeschooling mothers state "Homeschooling works! Others can tell by how well behaved and successful our children are!" It burns me up because so many mothers have brought their children home because the school system couldn't handle their troubled kids. Then we hear "boy, she must be letting that kid walk all over her! She needs to send him to school where they will straighten him out, obviously she's not doing her job." Most of the time she's doing the best damn job she can, and people expecting her kid to be some compliant little genius because he is homeschooled is another person's unrealistic dream. I've been on both sides of the fence, and neither have very green grass.
sorry. I was addressing Anonymous 3:08 and not Econ-Scott.
Dear Dr. Helen,
Not only do home-schooled children write books, public schooled kids write them as well. My nephew (8 y/o public school 2nd grader) recently wrote a book titled "why gorge W BUSH wants too kil my mommy and dady and Kitty to!" It is lovely story of a child seeking answers as to why the government doesn't just force rich people to pay higher salaries to public school teachers, oh and help the hungry.
D. Reid
i adore books, i love them, why.. because my dad started reading to me when i was 3 weeks old, it was a book called the butterfly ball, fantastic pictures, and he used to read me one chapter of a book per night. it instilled in me a love of books.
thats the problem, parents dont read to their kids or not many, it takes 30-40 minutes to read a alfred hitchcock and the 3 investigators book.. it seems a lot of parents dont even have this time..
i read the grapes of wrath in school , and of mice and men, and dear god they are so dreary and boring, why shouldnt kids be given a choice, boys dont generally like the same books as girls, its the way their brains work.. CLUE they are different.
and homeschooling, if its completley unstructured then that only creates monsters, it has helped some.. but equally irresponsible parents are to blame.
i know one woman, she didnt pass high school, she has never had a job, never reads for fun, and yet she wants to homeschool her kids (they dont have a computer the kids arent allowed outside incase they get germs on them). and yet she wants to homeschool..in that case it would be seriously bad idea.
Mercurior,
All of Steinbeck is pretty dreary, but at least G of Wr teaches some history and that in itself is a big deal - you have no idea the blank loks you get from kids in this country when you try to tell them that there are and have always been white poor in the US.
There are those instances of rabbit-hole types trying to home school their kids out of fear of the real world, but, you, know, there is some sense even to that impulse. The parochial school system across the county came out of that feeling. After at the time, the so-called public schools were really just government funded Protestant schools. Catholic parents wanted to raise their kids as Christians, so the public schools were out of the question. And Evangelicals have ben doing the same thing now, for about 30 years. That way they can't keep thiee kids out of integrated public schools. It's all a matter of respecting people's choices, rather than seeing them for what they really are.
When I was in first grade I spent reading time in the second grade class. When I was in second grade, they had a segregated group that read and did other work at an advanced level. I was the only male. My teacher expressed concern to my mother that I was only hanging around with girls. My mother, bright woman that she is, blew her off. However, the association with the girls did not last beyond that year, and I have to wonder what the teacher told the parents of the _girls_.
And I have to wonder how many other boys in the 70s were put in a situation in which they could either associate with boys or be well-educated, and how many teachers forced them to do the former rather than the latter.
My mother never read to me, but I think because we were poor, books were pretty much the only form of entertainment. I read a lot. I have always enjoyed reading fiction. I just get lost in those stories. The biggest mistake I made was not reading to my kids. I was ignorant. I didn't see the connection of reading to someone as increasing their knowledge and intelligence.
Years go by and I grew smarter. I had the honor of taking care of young children while I homeschooled my kids. I read to these children and I read a lot. What a difference it made! It was so obvious. It wasn't just giving them the desire to read. It made a difference in their lives in all areas. They were more social, more aware, more articulate, more confident. It blew me away.
The good news is I didn't stay ignorant and my children didn't suffer because of it. My oldest reads books that are so far beyond me that I just stand in awe of her. My youngest has been working on a novel she is writing for years. I thought it was good and she scrapped the whole thing and started over.
I just love watching the world and possiblities open up to kids.
Actually, not all Steinbeck is necessarily "pretty dreary". Cannery Row and Sweet Thursday are quite light-hearted, I'd say. If I was going to introduce a kid to Steinbeck, I'd probably try those two books and work my way up to The Grapes of Wrath.
Will
jim i live in the Uk, so even if it was about history, it wasnt as relevant to the UK.
boys do like a little more adventure (and so do some girls) i still remember it, it was supposed to be for english literature, and everyone was bored silly but grapes..but the teacher was a "progressive" one
Mercurior,
LOL - although from what I read in the *gasp* Guardian, the notion of poor whites is pretty novel to a lot of people there too. And I had sorted ut that yuo were Britiah a while back. BTW, good for you for following this blog.
Anon,
This titles are pretty light-hearted, and in the hands of a real master, they would have been better. I am a real California chauvinist, so it hurts to say this, but Steinbeck is not the gem of our national literature. Now, Joan ddidon and Frank Herbert are writers to be roud of. And yes, I am well aware that Frank Herbert was from Tacoma and not naywhere in Cali, but that didn't keep him from writing our national epic, Dune.
Now there's a piece of literature for the kiddies. It lays out everything about California history a kid needs to know.
Dr. Helen,
You post about home schooling a lot. I'm curious, do you home school your daughter? If yes, do you recommend a curriculum?
Hi Dr. Melissa,
No, I do not homeschool my daughter; however, I am a fan of homeschooling and not much of a fan of public school. So I have no curriculum to suggest.
Congrats on being a Weblog award finalist, I have been voting for you daily. Good luck!
D. Reid said: "Dear Dr. Helen, Not only do home-schooled children write books, public schooled kids write them as well. My nephew (8 y/o public school 2nd grader) recently wrote a book titled "why gorge W BUSH wants too kil my mommy and dady and Kitty to!" It is lovely story of a child seeking answers as to why the government doesn't just force rich people to pay higher salaries to public school teachers, oh and help the hungry."
It seems like I saw something similar to this on the Huffington Post.
Getting boys to read
It's true, I grew up hating to read. Now I write action-adventures & mysteries especially for boys 8 - 13, who also may not like to read.
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My blog, Books for Boys, ranks in the top 5 on Yahoo and the top 20 on Google and you can find it at http://booksandboys.blogspot.com There you will also find links to my author's web site and another blog with 50 pages of reviews.
At the present time, I'm posting sample chapters from my books on the above blog.
If you have any questions, please let me know.
Thank you,
Max Elliot Anderson
Author
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Now, from an author who hated to read...comes books kids hate to put down.
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