November 28, 2009, 09:00 PM ET

A Book for Boys

For a few years now, a recurring concern has been the widening gap between boys and girls at the college level. With girls making up around 58 percent of the undergrad population, college-admissions offices are scrambling (see here), and the U.S Commission on Civil Rights is investigating whether colleges are practicing affirmative action for boys to keep the entering classes from reaching the critical 60-40 imbalance that puts the "operational sex ratio" out of whack (see here, and also this).

Much of the problem isn't an in-school issue. Yes, girls do more homework and take more AP classes, but a more fundamental factor in the problem may stem from leisure habits, particularly reading time. Indeed, leisure reading trends play a huge role in academic achievement (see this U.S. Dept of Ed report). Kids who don't enjoy reading on their own time don't do as well in school.

Reading trends by gender mirror the academic achievement gap (see here). I hear the problem echoed in comments from parents all the time. "My son's a great kid," they say, "but I can't get him to read."

Try this book by Pat Williams, VP of the NBA's Orlando Magic, I tell them. It's called "Read for Your Life," with a foreword by Phil Jackson, coach of the LA Lakers, and testimonials by Grant Hill, Dick Vitale, Lou Holtz, and former-Senator and NBA great Bill Bradley. The names are important because of the weight they might carry with a recalcitrant 16-year-old boy. If he loves sports, catches SportsCenter every night, and idolizes the icons, Williams is a draw. He's been an NBA mover and shaker for decades -- general manager for Chicago, Atlanta, and Philly before co-founding the Magic in 1987. He and his wife have adopted 14 children, he hosts radio talk shows, and he runs in marathons.

The book itself presses home the message again and again. If you don't read books, the world is smaller. If you don't read books, your mind starves; your opinions harden; life has no historical depth; the future looks like a repetition of the present; and life doesn't unfold and evolve -- it passes in routines.

In a parent's mouth, perhaps, those assertions don't count for much with a teenage boy. But in Williams' mouth, and echoed by his sources (Oprah Winfrey, Harry Truman, Walt Disney, George Carlin, Leonardo da Vinci, John Adams, etc.), they might strike home and pull a few minutes away from the video game and the iPhone and send him to a book.

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Comments

1. chuckkle - November 29, 2009 at 06:55 pm

I think encouraging reading for any and all students is good. But I'm not sure what the first paragraph is getting at. Why the passive first sentence which has no agency producing the presumed "problem." And what is that problem? Just who thinks it's a problem to have 60%S females and 40% males on campus? Is the "problem" hat it's hard to enforce traditional gender behavior when there's an imbalance? That heterosexuality itself is threatened? I sure don't remember conservatives worrying about that 50 years ago when the proportions tended to skew in favor of males.

Chuck Kleinhans

2. post_functional - November 29, 2009 at 07:58 pm

I don't know, Mr. Kleinhans. I'm a little nervous about the gender overdog being so relatively undereducated.

3. markbauerlein - November 30, 2009 at 07:50 am

If you check the links, Chuck, you'll see the worries social psychologists have over a gender imbalance that runs past 60-40.

4. jairrels - November 30, 2009 at 08:00 am

Forgive me, Dr. Bauerlein, but this seems like a good place to promote my book, "African Americans and Standardized Tests: The Real Reason for Low Test Scores." The book emphasizes the importance of reading. I have an appendix (in the book)listing books that African American children might find interesting, including a book by former NFL player, Tim Green. Green, who is also an attorney, believes in the power of reading and wrote the book "Football Genius" with 10-14 year old boys as his target audience.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZOkQQwEhgo

5. 22137478 - November 30, 2009 at 09:30 am

Mark,
While I appreciate your bringing attention to this discrepancy, the idea that boys "just haven't found the right book" seems both desperate or romantic. While there is a disturbing gap, your own writings report again and again that girls aren't reading very much or well, especially not the kinds of materials that prepare them for college. Perhaps the best way to address this problem would be if schools became literacy academies where students spent at least two hours of the school day reading (quietly), being helped with reading, learning from reading, and being held accountable for what they have read. Then, it might matter less whether a guy could read a book and still be masculine. I know such a setup would not entirely resolve the disparity , but I wonder what would happen if reading really was made a priority.

6. minnesotan - November 30, 2009 at 09:47 am

"I sure don't remember conservatives worrying about that 50 years ago when the proportions tended to skew in favor of males."

So your way to 'get back' at them is to turn a blind eye when the problem swings the other way? Very mature.

7. chuckkle - November 30, 2009 at 09:57 am

I did check the links, Mark, and I don't see anything written by social psychologists. There is a description by an admissions officer of how the system at Kenyon College is not meritocratic: less qualified males edge out women. A news report describes that the US Civil Rights Commission is going to investigate the matter in the future. One link is simply advertising a book by a Newsweek writer, a professional journalist. Another journalist reports on a visit to James Madison which seems pitched to find gender imbalance a problem because it encourages male students to sleep around a lot instead of going steady.

Just who is it that finds this a problem, and what kind of a problem is it?

It seems to me that rejecting admissions based on merit should present a problem for a conservative like you. Or should (male) gender trump all? And now can we talk about race and other identity matters in admissions?

Chuck Kleinhans

8. dank48 - November 30, 2009 at 10:46 am

I doubt that the entire academic establishment could do anything to encourage reading by anyone, male or female, that would even begin to compare with J. K. Rowling, Stephanie Meyer, Edward Stratemeyer, et al. in effectiveness. No, Harry Potter and those freaking vampires are not War and Peace or Remembrance of Things Past. Nor were they meant to be. But they do get the kids voluntarily turning pages.
So far as I can tell, the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew are pure products of the marketplace, that is, the series were written and published for no high-minded reason whatsover, but simply to make money. As such, they have been meeting a demand for decades now. My guess would be that such "trash books" have provided the thin edge of the wedge for a lifetime of reading on the part of far more people than anything the academy could ever come up with.
Orwell's essay on boys' papers makes the point; it's better to have kids reading "bad" literature than to have them ignoring "good" literature.

9. markbauerlein - November 30, 2009 at 10:48 am

Anyone who has books to recommend for boys is welcome here, jairrels. And you're right, 22137478, girls' reading rates are declining as well, and we shouldn't overlook the general problem just because one group is sliding faster than the other. For the links, Chuck, I was a little slack in getting right to social scientists, but you can follow Whitmire to discussions of "operational sex ratios." But don't let me give the impression that affirmative action in admissions for boys is the answer. Not at all, and one point of the post was to indicate the trend of private colleges of doing just that.

10. willynilly - November 30, 2009 at 10:56 am

Mark,
Another total turnoff in your very first sentence. In all the higher education institutions I served, as well as those I attended, the learners were universally referred to as men and women - not boys and girls. Who are they allowing you to teach at Emory, 12 and 13 year olds? Isn't it time for you to just throw in the towel on this Chronicle venture?

11. jffoster - November 30, 2009 at 12:18 pm

Chuckkle (1), what "passive sentence" are you referring to? Professor Bauerlein's first sentence is not "passiave". Indeed, it isn't even transitive.

12. pat_dee - December 01, 2009 at 10:51 am

For over 25 years colleges have been using "centering" or SAT scores for women, which is just another name for willy nilly boosting their scores. Why not just disgard this cheating in favoring of women. Also read "War on Boys" and consider single moms who "bond" with their daughters and take out their frustrations with their ex's on their sons. A 30 year social study discovered that moms in general pay a great deal more time talking to (honoring, training) their female toddlers.

13. windupstories - December 01, 2009 at 02:34 pm

This seems fairly obvious, but If you actually want boys to read, you have to give them something they'll enjoy reading. A book that says "you should read, because reading is important" won't have any impact at all. Read For Your Life is a nice idea, but a poor solution.

When I was a boy, I became a voracious reader because the stories themselves sucked me in, not because any adult figure told me it was good for me. Until you can hand a boy a book and say, "Read this; it'll blow you away!" you aren't going to get much reading progress.

14. dank48 - December 02, 2009 at 04:25 pm

Yes, which is one reason kids' books tend to have lots of pictures, which in effect bootstrap the child's motivation to find out more. If that map had been left out of the front matter to Treasure Island . . .