'Boys don't read fiction'

[Lottapianos]

I was told this by a teacher as part of a training session the other day. She was referring to older boys, about 8 years plus. She said the best way to get boys of this age into reading is to give them Top Gear magazines or computer magazines and comics. Hmm. No boys are interested in anything else apparently

Any kind of gender stereotyping gets my hackles up but she said there is research to support it. I know there are concerns about younger boys not being interested in books full stop and various theories about why this might be - reading seen as 'feminised' activity, boys not being expected to be able to sit down and read, boys being seen as 'naturally' more active than girls. All of which I would say are down to gender stereotyping by adults and not anything that innately prejudices boys against reading.

Any thoughts on why boys might not be interested in fiction, or any other aspect of reading and literacy development?

My dad says this, but he is an arrogant, old misogynist, much as I love him! Never thought I'd hear a teacher say it

I read loads if fiction as a boy and it did continue into adulthood. Nothing high brow just fun stories, I suppose mostly I read because there were books in the house and XBoxes etc hadn't been invented.

It's a bit dim to say offer a Top gear magazine though.

I have two teenagers. My son reads a lot of fiction and my daughter hates reading. Her written work is still far better than his, and although reading contributes to ability to write well, I think there are other gender based factors around play and social skills that have a major impact on English ability.

I thought it was interesting that in those links it was claimed that the gender based literacy gap has been in place for at least sixty years, so is presumably based on something other than recent social changes. I don't see how we can change it unless more men are prepared to change the way they model behaviour to boys so that boys engage differently with language. It can't all be about expecting schools to change the whole of society.

I wonder what you mean by an "ability to write well"? It is dangerous to make gender generalisations based on our own children. What, exactly, is the claim that is being made when it is said that boys write less well than girls? At what age? And are we talking about handwriting, or self-expression, or the organisation of data and analysis in an essay, or the written display of comprehension of a text that has been read?

It makes me think of the crashing deterioration in young adults' ability to produce a sustained and organised piece of analytical writing -- in the manner of old-fashioned A level exams and undergraduate work. That seems the most disturbing reduction in literacy skills, so I wonder if there is any suggestion that boys display this more than girls? I would suspect not. I think that non-gender-based factors to do with the movement to less challenging forms of writing and learning in school is muddying the water in this respect and that boys are in fact as well able as girls to develop mature writing skills.

Butthereagain, I am basing that statement on the link to the work by the commission on boys' reading given in this thread, which in turns gives a literature review on boys' reading and writing. It discusses the various types of writing, including the ones you have mentioned, which are all tested as part of the GCSE Engliah language qualification, with the exception of hand writing. I am not generalising from my old child. I am merely using him to illustrate the point that it is not as straightforward as reading fiction makes a good reader.

There is very good evidence that boys have poorer skills in reading and writing. I see no point in wondering about it or suspecting it when the evidence is available in links on this thread. The issue remaining is what is the cause, and evidence about what causes it is also discussed in the links. As one of the causes given is creation of gender identity, then that leaves us with the very complex problem of how gender identity is formed in boys, and how we can change that in the face of wide social influences that reinforce conventional masculinity, and a seemingly increasing number of MRA influenced people who refuse to accept that conventional masculinity is problematic and damaging to children.

I was told by DS's Yr1 teacher that he preferred fact to fiction. Which was strange, given what he was reading at home (eg Harry Potter, Rohald Dahl etc (to himself)). Aged 8 he is very happily reading fiction and a great variety of it. He does like factual books as well. And comics.

I'm interested, though, in the decline in both genders of a particular set of writing skills the decline that university teachers bemoan when they have to teach them to undergraduates who ought already to have acquired them in schools. As far as I know, that isn't an arena in which males do worse than females and I do wonder whether the teaching methods of which it is a consequence have tended to emphasise dubious virtues to do with obediance to examiner expectations, turning out specific phrases in approved manners a kind of people-pleasing instead of robust and original thought. I worry that, among other things, this just becomes yet another arena in which young women absorb the message that pleasing others is what counts. Because girls are taught that across the board (i.e. they are pressured to please others rather than assert themselves), they learn it more effectively than boys, and perhaps this contributes to their better performance in modern assessments. So I think that both genders, not just boys, suffer from gender-specific challenges when it comes to writing skills.

Well...the publishing industry would attest that there is some truth in the idea that boys don't read fiction.

Universities have strict marking guidelines, as exam boards do at GCSE. If anything, university standards are stricter in terms of writing style and the points a student is expected to cover at both undergraduate and taught postgraduate level. The difference in student ability is largely down to expansion of higher education and the range of students now attending.

I do feel that part of the reason that DS IS poor at writing is that he was required to follow a strict set of requirements - his story had to be on x subject and had to use y adjectives or whatever... and in Yr1 making them write out 'parts' of a story - he just didn't see the point in doing this so didn't do it got bad marks and decided he couldn't do it. Its only now in Yr4 that we're making inroads into that lack of confidence.

wordfactory - maybe it would be better expressed as 'some boys are not interested in fiction', or even that 'girls tend to read more fiction than boys'? It's just that 'boys don't...' is a massive generalisation.

Mistlethrush, there is research that claims there is an over-reliance on scaffolding in the teaching of writing in primary school and that it limits children's writing. I think that too much is taught about writing for different purposes in primary school, and while the rules around that are important for both reading comprehension and writing ability, I think it would be better taught almost entirely during the secondary years.

I wonder if the decline in writing ability has happened because of the advent of email and word processing? It seems completely logical that this is the case, but I wonder if there is research done about it? My generation is the last which didn't have ready access to computers, so we wrote letters, wrote essays etc. I'm far from a Luddite, but I do wonder if we're losing useful skills because of the ease of using a computer.

Where is the evidence that there has been a decline in writing? And no, teens who spend more time texting, emailing and using social networking have higher writing abilities than their peers. Ability to understand text speak is also correlated with reading ability.

Freya - I agree - DS got told to 'write down the first part of 'George and the Dragon' - so didn't because it was already in the book (Doh!). If he'd been asked to write about a Dragon or a knight with lots of descriptive words he would have been quite happy. And it really dented his confidence. Oh - and don't get me started on the 'well he can't go up any more book bands because his writing is not on the same level as his reading' which I had from the same teachers.

But on the other hand captchaos so many of us are spending so much more time expressing ourselves in writing than we used to -- on discussion boards like this and so on. That must amount to an enormous growth in certain expressive skills, even if it is associated with a decline in certain traditional/formal skills. There is such a flowering of written creativity online, such strong written voices emerging from so many people.

Reading/writing is actually such a very very broad bundle of abilities that it is never going to be the case across the board that there is a decline or a progression in reading and writing, or that either gender is performing better at reading/writing simpliciter, as distinct from performing better in some subset of relevant skills.

Fair enough

I'm sure I read about a school somewhere that was using some of of blogging software to encourage children to write (and read each other's blogs). They seemed to feel it was useful for boys in particular.

Here's a link to the BBC report.

Good thing DS know that he isn't supposed to read fiction!! He is 7 and absolutely loves reading - Enid Blyton, Raoul Dahl, Horrid Henry ...

I really can't abide gender stereotyping along these lines either. I currently work with teens teaching those struggling with English. In my experience there can be issues with both genders reading. I applaud this teacher's approach to having boys read anything which interests them but would fully extend this to girls. I also find that a bit of research into interests can result in some excellent fictional books which can lead to more reading. One example is finding books based on basketballs (but with underlying racism themes we could look into) for one student, who has just been scouted for a basketball team. It has been slow going but by his own admission he is enjoying it. On the other hand I also have students who read voraciously and don't (thank goodness) stick to 'boy' books.

My own eldest son reads avidly, all kinds of things, so do I. I am getting husband involved in reading again. There are so many wonderful books out there, so many of which written by male authors. Clearly some boys are reading and going on to be writers. That 'boys don't read' is really a lazy, and patently untrue stereotype.

*basketball not basketballs