According to the Strib, boys don't read as much as girls.
The article focused on teachers trying to get boys to read more. Read it and let me know what your opinions are if you have any. I found it interesting for several reasons. One, I never read any books as a kid. I hated reading, to some extent I still do. But somehow I am able to read things at a normal level if not better. I don't know how this happened. It seems, at least for me, that learning and being able to read were very separated from the desire to read.
Another reason I found this interesting is that the Strib actually published an article about differences between boys and girls in school. It seems to me that our culture tends to tell us that gender plays no role in things such as this. Then the Strib went even further and sort of suggested that by incorporating sports etc. that it can encourage them to read. It's like something pulled straight out of the 50's!
Here are my theories, and you better leave yours.
I think boys in general are less interested in stories. It doesn't matter if it's about baseball, girls, bugs or guts. They just don't care about stories. Women like stories. There are lots of emotions in stories. Boys typically don't want anything to do with emotions.
Boys are adventurous. They like learning, it's just that a lot of what they want to learn about has nothing to do with whatever reading assignment they have in their bag.
If you gave a boys a bunch of chemicals, materials and an instruction manual on how to build a simple bomb, they without a doubt would (after their intuition failed) pick up the manual, read it, and then blow up some small animal that they learned how to trap from their boy scouts field manual.
So, to end this crappy blog, I will offer public school teachers my advice on how to get kids to read. Give them a constructive assignment that forces them to use their brain and somehow obtain relevant knowledge in order to proceed.
Or....tell them that they don't have to read, but if they don't they will grow up and most likely make much less than their reading counterparts. They will then wish they could read but won't have the motivation to learn. So, they better just learn to read now because if they don't they will be held back a year and all the older and bigger kids will think they are losers and probably kick the crap out of them at recess...while of course taunting them for being so stupid. Then they will be stupid, beat up, and on the road to poverty.
The End.
3 comments:
Mark. This is unrelated but did you see that article about how in Angola they were filming a crime movie and the Angolan police drive up and think that the actors are real robbers and shoot them DEAD.
WTF. I think this is a story you would be good at commenting on.
I think boys read less because we're naturally smarter. Girls have to read to learn but we just know. Children intuitively know this. This comment is a perfect example, guys already knew this but girls probably didn't know until they read it. You're welcome.
So no one will probably read this, but I saw that picture of the upside down book and though, "I bet people think Bush is so dumb that he didn't realize the book was upside down. They're saying to themselves, 'What an idiot!'" (should thoughts be in quotes? I'm not sure. But I digress...)
I thought that because my counter-thought (which came about by me asking myself, "why would it be upside down?") is that he was probably reading to the children so they could see the words and pictures, thus the book would be upside down. And it's hard to read upside down. So it's actually a sign of being smart.
Anyway, those are my thoughts. Thank you for reading.
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