to be annoyed with this sexist reading advice sent home from school?

[morningpaper]

"Until the day your daughter expresses an interest in rocket science or your son gets into showjumping, you won?t go far wrong if you try them out with these kinds of books?

Boys...

• Enjoy books about their interests - especially dinosaur ones!
• Like books that are a bit scary, funny or have silly jokes.
• Often have a shorter attention span, so books you can dip in and out of may work better for them. Try comic strip books and non fiction.
• Prefer big, bold, colourful illustrations or things that can be moved or touched.
• Like reading to have a purpose, for example books that show you how to make things or tell you about things.

Girls...

• Enjoy series of books about the same characters.
• Like to listen to talking books and watch DVDs of favourite books.
• Enjoy a bit of fantasy, magic and make believe ? princesses, castles and so on.
• Like sparkle and glitter on the pages.
• Enjoy books that have props with them ? dolls, soft toys, dressing-up clothes."

What's wrong with glitter anyway? I am sure most of us loved glitter when we were young but I think the Barbie count is pretty low judging by the force of the comments below!

Agree with the posters who point out that there has been a major change from the sixties and earlier. When I was a child, or when my Dad was a child, noone thought boys were naturally uninterested in reading. Or that girls didn't do adventure. My brothers and I read pretty well the same books.

Same with life outside books. It is this generation of girls that are too scared to climb a tree in case they mess up their pretty fluffy outfit. In my day (them olden days), we were all dressed so we could do things.

I read to my children every other night (dh reads on the other night), and I make sure I choose stories with strong male and female characters (not so hard to do if you look). Both my children enjoy this, and I think it helps to counter any ideas about "girls don't have adventures" or "boys don't have feelings". It takes more time and effort to find books that aren't pink and fluffy or tough and silly, but in my experience those sort of books are formulaic and badly written as well as sexist. It helps that I really enjoy children's fiction, so it's no hardship to suss out what I think will be the good ones. To be honest I would expect anything producd by Leapfrog to be crap in any case.

In previous generations a great many more people couldn't read at all - the more so the further back you go.

At the moment, boys do tend on average to back away from reading more than girls as they get older, probably partly because of peer pressure. But that effect probably doesn't appear much in well-educated upper/middle-class children - the ones who could always read anyway.

Do agree with you about the polarity of boy/girl differences though and the girlie clothes. In the 70s you could go into a shop and buy children's clothes - unisex, just for kids - that almost never happens now.

I don't know much about Leapfrog but I also agree that fiction written for reading schemes does tend to be crap. I just don't know why anyone bothers when there is so much great proper fiction out there. It's non-fiction I know about and in that area there is more of a genuine boy-girl division (though it's not total of course).

It must majorly annoy all the authors who spend a lot of time and creative energy writing really well for children to see them turn to the "pink" shelf (the boys shelves never seem quite so nasty) and pick up Twinkly Sparkly Fairy Goes to a Party instead of their carefully crafted prose. The same woudl I am sure be true of non-fiction, lots of poor quality stuff there too. And it's not even cheaper!

Hum,

ds has only 2 more Famous Five books to read and has finished all the secret 7.

He is obviously a girl.

I think the advice is pretty much spot on actually. The first sentence though is unfortunate.

As a DC I read all my brother's books-he didn't read any of mine. I would be very surprised if any boy read What Katy Did or the Chalet School series.
I know lots of girls who are Beavers, Cubs and Scouts-I don't know a single boy Rainbow, Brownie or Guide!
To be tempted to read boys need 'boy' type material.

My 3 sons would enjoy reading all of the 'boys' books and show no interest in the 'girls' books tbh.

I dont think its sexist at all, it is just a suggestion. Research has proven that boys and girls learn in different ways and enjoy different things.

well, the boy list sounds like everything my eldest son would love.

While the girl list described my youngest son's preferences perfectly!

But tbh, as a general rule of thumb, girls like certain things, boys like certain things. As adults we can scream about gender stereotyping (and I have done, long and loud ), but the fact is that boys and girls are generally wired differently!

Not all the time obviously - as my ds2 demonstrates

MP - what a lot of crap your DCs school talks.

My DD's (4) fave DVD at the moment is James Bond. She loved Iron Man and Hancock at the cinema. I am going to get her some good adventure type books for Christmas

To me it seems once you move out of the cheaply mass-produced tinselly-fairy space-adventure stuff, an awful lot of the quality books are not "girl" books or "boy" books but simply good books.

Even more noticeable when you look at Scandinavian authors, such as Janson, Proysen or Lindgren. Afaik Astrid Lindgren (of Pippi Longstocking fame) actually started out writing girly books but gave it up when she learned to write good books.

Having delved a bit further into the website, it says "in association with the National Schools Partnership" which sounds completely kosher, and as if it's at the very least a sad government exercise... it's in fact a private business although that's well hidden amongst the nonsense they spout.

All the "partnerships" are just ways of getting commerce into schools. It's no different to schools having coke machines, but more insidious I think.

www.nationalschoolspartnership.com/about.html

and all the enthusiastic quotations seem to be from people who work for them....

Finally, they quote working with top notch educationalists, but there are no names, no panel of teachers etc mentioned.

All deeply deeply suspicious I reckon. Eg.s..

1 - The Eco-Traveller pack - sponsored by First Choice?

2 - information on bacteria etc., via oral hygiene - courtesy of Listerine...

3 - Ed Venture's Eco-Challenge Sponsored by Virgin Holidays....

4 - I love my Planet - "This project has been kindly sponsored by UBISOFT Ltd who are launching ?Planet Rescue?, a new range of games for the Nintendo DS and Wii that focus on saving and protecting animals in their natural habitats. "

and so on, ad nauseum (sp?)

Why do they make laws against selling to children in other arenas but not this one? It's the Bounty Pack taken to a whole new level.

Hmmm it is interesting how a lot of the posters who think this is not such a big deal are the mothers of BOYS.

I think if you are the mother of GIRLS then perhaps you are used to picking up on frustrating and dangerous stereotypes like this. Yes they are SUGGESTIONS but they are SHIT suggestions based around girls being fluffy RECIPIENTS of life (talking books / fantasy / princesses!) and boys being ACTIVE EXPLORERS of life (nature / humour / moving/touching things / reading "with a purpose" - the example given being engineering).

These stereotypes - whether based on generalisations or not - are HARMFUL to girls; they restrict their choices and shrink their horizons. Whereas boys are encouraged to "get out there" and explore and find out how things work. So I think that mothers of girls are perhaps more aware that this sort of insidious stereotyping is not just 'harmless' or 'suggestive' but is in fact extremely damaging and limiting.

As a mother of a girl and boy (albeit a baby 4mth one), this kind of stuff STILL pisses me off tbh. Though agree with everything you say MP, but thought I'd add:

Dd (2.6) wants to buy ds a dress for christmas (a pink and sparkly one of course) and I was kind of 'oh no, darling, boys can't wear dresses' and then I thought 'poor ds. I hope he gets the chance to enjoy twirling around in a 'flippy' dress like my dd does' (I'm sure he will, with a big sister who has lots of dresses to try on).

In fact, it is patronising and another example of the male 'norm' that girls are 'allowed' to do 'boyish things more than it is acceptable for a boy to play with (girly- sic) pink and sparkles. Full of threads about how dreadful it is that the girls aisles are full of pink (although it is a bit overwhelming) and glitter - well, glitter is NICE. We should be sorry that the boys aisles aren't full of glitter. Why not? Don't children like glitter? Lots of glitter and sparkles and adventures and bugs and pink and green goo is fun for EVERYBODY. And of course, some kids will like some stuff more than others.

MP I totally agree with what you say in your last post about the messages given to girls. But if you look at these guidelines carefully, you could argue that they are making boys sound equally shallow - short attention spans, like lots of pics, like silly jokes and snippets of information etc. That's because these guidelines are actually largely about format - there is a tiny bit of stuff about princesses/castles and dinosaurs but they don't generally divide up subject matter between boys and girls (and anyway castles can be a very stereotypically "boy" subject too).

They are mainly about how information is presented, and (although magnificently craply presented and written by someone who obviously does have a sexist attitude, which is terrible) that information in itself could be useful. In fact as I look at the lists I see a fairly accurate description of how DP and I read, still, even though we are far from gender-stereotyped in our careers and interests. It is even true that I am far more taken with glitter on DS's books than DP is - I hadn't even thought of it as girly, I'd thought of it as a design issue.

Agree snowleopard, it does make boys sound A BIT THICK

well yes I am a mother of boys, but I was once a little girl, and believe it or not I do remember being a little girl and the sort of stuff I was into - and remembering what I enjoyed reading is very easy as my house is still full of all the books that were my favourites...........which would fit perfectly onto the "girls" ideas list in your OP.

But FAQ that's FINE

and I have bought my girls an OVEN for christmas FFS, I don't make them play with cars all day or anything

But there THE WORLD OF A DIFFERENCE between saying "Some girls might like books that are like this..." and saying "Girls like sparkle and glitter"

But the things is while boys aren't thick, it has been shown that boys and girls do (on average of course, there are exceptions) process information differently, find different kinds of formats appealing. I bear boys in mind when I write and I know what bits the average boy will read first and how they will approach a page of information and take it in. I know from reviews and letters that the books that are the biggest hit with boys are the books that are written in snippet form with jokes, interesting pictures and things to do. And I'm glad that those types of books are there for them tbh. It doesn't stop girls from reading them and enjoying them either of course.

I do agree with you on so much of this and I think that it was a sexist mailing - but I also think that knowing about this stuff could help parents who are finding that their boys are reluctant to read.

why is there a world of difference in general girls do like sparkle and glitter!

Can't say that my bookshelf full of stories with girls being the fluffy types had any impact on my views on the world and what I could/couldn't do........probably helped by the fact that my mother showed me in RL what woman were perfectly capable of doing - and gave me a sense of adventure by taking me out on long walks (even in the pissing, freezing rain) when I was younger

Any parents who has taken the VAGUEST interest in their child is not going to to aided in any way by this sort of list

but perhaps parents who's reading list extends as far as the TV guide may be aided by it.

Mm maybe that's true.