Whose Problem

Whose Problem?
Boys, literacy, and what is best for everyone
Picture a reader. A real reader. Who do you see, and what are they doing? Chances are good that you envision some form of a person young or old, sitting still and utterly absorbed in their book. Chances are also good that you imagined a female, and that she may be reading some work of fiction. Now consider this scenario, and whether or not this is reading. Three boys are drawing cartoons of their own version of Captain Underpants, but using their friends and some characters from their favorite video game as the main actors. They are laughing out loud, and providing a soundtrack for the various irreverent and gross actions that are happening in their constructed world on paper. Is that considered reading? Generally, the first image is a much more widely accepted idea of what reading is, yet it is clear that reading and writing are deeply embedded in this experience.
In the fields of education and librarianship there is ongoing discussion and concern about the achievement of boys, their level of involvement and interaction, and their lack of enthusiasm about reading. The general impression is that it’s not boys who are lounging around, nose buried in a book. A steady amount of research related to gender and literacy in library and education publications has tasked itself with examining data, explaining problems, and proposing solutions and actions.
Not all are convinced that there is imminent threat and demise of male readers, but the general feeling in the research is of varying levels of alarm, blame, and concern about how to fix an apparently growing problem. The mainly female adult world of elementary teachers and librarians are struggling with a feeling or concept that all is not as good as it could be with the relationship between them and the boys they are charged with educating and providing services to. Three main types of description and explanation occur in the research literature: 1.) blame it on gender, boys are genetically different than girls and have different learning needs, 2.) the achievement gap between boys and girls is big and growing bigger, and cause for alarm and 3.) reading is mainly a female activity.
Each of these responses is focused on what the boys are or aren’t doing, and are descriptive in nature. By gaining a more contextualized perspective and deeper understanding of what boys are actually doing, there is the ability for adults in both professions to then look beyond gender, and find ways of expanding the interactions in an inclusive and richer environment for all. This shift in interactions can promote and provide access to more than the prototypical reader--one curled up in a chair for hours on end, solitary and unmoving as they devour the pages of a book--the results are positive for both genders, and embrace the wider range of preferences, emotions, and exploration in literature than is commonly held as valid or important.
Perspectives in Research
Three main explanations are explored in research about boys and literacy: boys are genetically different, and therefore have different needs for learning, are possibly mis-characterized through statistical interpretation, and are convinced that reading is a female endeavor.
Gender differences are proposed to be outside the control of boys, and that they are to be addressed by altering the curriculum to better serve their needs and inclinations. Generally referred to as an essentialist point of view, it accepts that gender defines the types of actions and preferences. These generally oversimplified and oft-repeated characteristics include the fact that boys don't like to read, are reluctant readers, cannot sit still, and would do better in single-sex classrooms, among others. These generalizations are then reinforced by articles such as "Boys and Reading: An action research project report."(Kwok, 2009) Kwok spends time closely observing two challenging boys, one a reluctant reader and one diagnosed with ADHD. She works within the confines of the teacher's lesson plans, while offering particular titles and getting to know the boys as readers. In this situation, she "went along with Ms. Jane's poetry plan and tried to think of interesting ways to capture these boys." (Kwok, 2009) She gives at least one opportunity for the boys to respond to poetry with an artistic response, but overall finds limited success with these interventions and intense individual attention. What is characteristic of this approach is the narrow confines of what defines a "good reader" and the necessary and obligatory artifacts and actions that the students must produce based on the types of approved reading materials. This framework rejects the many boys who are exceptions to these generalized rules, and removes fault for boys who aren’t responsive to interventions while attributing their difficulties to their genetics which are out of their control.
Discussion about what the measured differences mean statistically, and about whether or not there is a large “gap” in achievement between boys and girls is a dizzying discussion. Often, the reasoning for adapting or re-thinking ways of programming, teaching and responding to the “boy problem” has been based on statistics of boys performance falling behind. Another issue is the responses on surveys and polls where boys and young men say that they don’t like school or reading. (Palmer, 2008) Analyzing data from all 50 states for 2007, the AAUW, an advocacy group for girls, found that "girls' successes don't come at boys' expense"(Corbett, 2008) and that where girls do well on standardized tests, so do boys. These outcomes directly challenge the general alarm and crisis-talk about the gender-gap in achievement on standardized tests. What became clear from looking at the data was that the “large discrepancies by race/ethnicity and family income level remain.”(Corbett, 2008) So while boys do fit into those categories, there is a much larger and historically consistent problem. In an investigation of the data provided by one of the largest Canadian assessments for students, the widely reported results that showed girls surpassing boys in reading ability was called into question. They state “the findings of this study strongly suggest that the notion of under-achievement of boys in the area of reading achievement has been greatly overstated.” (White, 2007)
The majority of librarians and teachers, especially at the elementary level, are female, and the argument voiced by Young (2001) and Newkirk (2000) is that reading is also viewed as feminized. "With 79 percent of librarians being female, can teen males realistically locate a male role model or even a display promoting "guy books" in public libraries?" Welch (2007, p. xviii) asks as he questions whether collection development done by a predominantly female staff is able to anticipate the interests and preferences of teen males. This is also true in schools, school libraries and for younger boys at public libraries. The surrounding role models all show boys that if you are female, reading is useful to you to grow and become like an elder in your classroom or library. The trend in reading instruction, in collection development, and in models for writing instruction suggest that "books trump magazines; print trumps the visual; the serious trumps the humorous; fiction trumps nonfiction." (Newkirk, 2000, p. 171) The perception of reading as feminized is supported largely by the adults present in schools and libraries, and the materials they encourage and select for reading.
Beyond Gender, Benefitting Boys and Girls
When researchers ask questions about boys’ reading, and how boys are interacting with text and in literacy situations, they are often constrained by the setting and parameters of the classroom. The library, whether school or public, is freed from these parameters, and capable of taking knowledge of what is happening in the classroom, and filling the needs of students for reading material and literacy experiences in more connected and individualized ways. Because teaching and librarianship are predominantly female professions, this means looking critically at general trends in what interests boys and why.
Clearly, generalizing about what one gender prefers or needs is fraught with opportunity for blunder, and guarantees exceptions. However, the preference of certain types of literature by boys and girls is supported by research, and remains fairly consistent over time. (Langerman, 1990)
Evidence exists that boys do read, yet it may not look or sound like the generalized definition of reading posed at the beginning of this paper. The manner and content of what many boys read is undervalued and doesn’t count as “real reading”. As Newkirk states, “boys’ traditional favorites—information books, humor, science fiction, and actions stories—are often treated as subliterature, something that a reader should move beyond as he moves toward realistic fiction with thematic weight.” (Newkirk, p. 70) This pervasive attitude and classification of high and low literature limits the selection, inclusion and celebration of titles that may appeal to boys and girls with preferences outside the traditionally acclaimed literature with moral weight.
The final observation in an article devoted to observing five boys browsing, talking about, and selecting books included an acknowledgement of the complexity of these boys’ tastes, interests and reasons for choosing the topics, genres and texts. Further,
Given the wide variety of literacy practices in which most adolescents engage over the course of a day as they travel between multiple academic and social contexts, finding that adolescents have complex reading interests for a diverse array of purposes should not be a shocking revelation. However, what is shocking is how reluctant the mainstream of classroom literacy practices has been to recognize and honor that complexity. (Cavazos-Kottke, 2006)
Clearly, boys and girls are complex beings and what can be generalized will always find exceptions. By reacting to what works for students, using best practices, and being sensitive to our internal biases about what “quality” means in reading, we inform the adult’s understanding of what good teaching or programming is.
In “Boys May be Boys But do They Have to Read and Write That Way?,” the mother of teenage boy twins and a writing teacher explores the violence that her boys include in their writing and her discomfort with this type of expression. (Williams, 2004) This may be the largest challenge to inviting in more of what boys enjoy; personal discomfort with the very genres that can be most dear because of an inability to view the subject matter in context. Newkirk (2007) very carefully discusses this topic as well, and leads a critique of the literalism that is applied to violence in writing. This is not to dismiss the destructive and disturbing occurrences of actual violence that our society has experienced, but to look closely at what purpose the actions have in the writing. Librarians may have less reservations than teachers when collecting texts, yet our collections grow in accordance with our biases, especially if unquestioned and untested. “The kinds of literacy practices to which boys are often drawn--connected to action, violence, and popular culture--are usually prohibited in the classroom where the emphasis is often on 'high culture' literature driven by character and nuance.” (Williams, 2004)
In “Teaching to the Minds of Boys” for example, the reasoning behind the types of changes that were made at an elementary school were neurological. The issue of whether or not differences in gender can be reduced to biology set aside, what actually happened in the classrooms were a change in the attitude and framework of understanding of the adults—not the children. This shift was by introducing more manners of instructing and learning, increasing the range of acceptable behaviors, and widening the possibilities of choice for students. The results, in addition to gathering the entire instructional team together for a common and directed purpose, were that “by introducing more boy-friendly teaching strategies in the classroom, the school was able to close the gender gap in just one year. At the same time, girls’ reading and writing performance improved.” (King and Gurian, 2006) While not specifically mentioning the school library, it is certain that the teacher-librarian was empowered to broaden the types of materials and their content with this new focus.
Brown and Meyers (2008) offer another example of a shift in the adults’ actions that benefit and draw in boys and girls with the inclusion of multiple intelligences. By using different intelligences (based on Howard Gardner’s work) they were able to tap into more modalities of learning, playing and interacting within programming at the library. This was achieved by incorporating aspects of programs that encourage the use of more than the linguistic intelligence. The encouragement from these two librarians, "We need to remember to include activities that that involve logic, music, visuals, and movement if want to appeal to boys, and we need to be open to the energy and activity that will ensue in our programs." This acknowledgement that inclusion looks different is key, and suggests that the experience of broader programming will ask the adults to reframe what it should look and sound like. The focus on the eight intelligences benefits many types of learners regardless of gender, although it is mentioned as a way to draw boys in.
There are many boys and girls who curl up with a good book and get lost inside it, forgetting their surroundings, and in their stillness, forget about the world around them. Their classmates and friends who interact with the written word differently, and who have interests in magazines, the sports pages, or intergalactic action scenes are no less readers. By expanding our idea of what reading looks like, changing our expectations of readers, and creating opportunities for interaction with the written word we welcome more boys into our libraries and into schools. Beyond that, we provide boys and girls with stronger connections to reading and writing by respecting and broadening what is acceptable, offered, and welcomed in the library--including Professor Poopypants!













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