I don't have time to write a whole bunch, but here are a few quotes from the article that really strike my attention...
"The 2010 Kid and Family Reading Report, sponsored by Scholastic, found that regardless of race, geography or socioeconomic status, boys were lagging far behind girls in reading outside of school assignments. Only 39 percent of boys rated reading outside of class as important, while 62 percent of girls said it was "extremely or very important." A 2005 NEA study by Mark Bauerlein and Sandra Stotsky found that between 1980 and 2004, the gender gap in reading between boys and girls had grown so wide that the authors determined it had become a "marker of gender identity." Again: Boys don't read...
Turning boys into readers isn't just a worry for publishing executives trying to find the next blockbuster series. There are massive policy implications. Girls are outperforming boys in reading in all 50 states, and boys are more than twice as likely to be to be placed in special education classes than girls...
Literacy expert Pam Allyn, founder of LitWorld and the Books 4 Boys program at Children's Village and author of the newly released, Pam Allyn's Best Books For Boys, observes that "illiteracy rates correlate with the risk of a jail sentence later in adolescence, making it twice as likely for nonreaders to be incarcerated." And indeed, 93 percent of the prison population in the United States is male...
The fact is that boys are reading. Just like girls, boys are hungry for stories that speak to them, that excite their imaginations and reflect their experiences. They are hungry for information to help them make sense of the world, or achieve a goal or just to geek-out on whatever is holding their attention at that moment....
A researcher at the University of Ontario recently looked into the reading lives of boys and found that almost all of the boys in her study described the reading they enjoyed, just like young Matt De La Peña and I did -- game manuals, fact books, graphic novels, sports magazines -- as "not really reading...
He argues passionately that schools need to broaden the tent of "what counts and does not count as a valid literacy activity," inviting so-called 'low culture' into the classroom alongside 'great literature' and showing that the interests, needs, and tastes of boys are valued and have a place in a reading life.
There are plenty of fart jokes in Shakespeare, and plenty of pathos in Captain Underpants.
Who are we to say which is "real" reading?"
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