Boys and Literacy

 

Hello all!

In an effort to address some of the struggles we are facing during this challenging school year I will be posting a series of excerpts from a research paper I wrote while at the University of Denver getting my masters in Library and Information Science. The paper is on Boys and Literacy.

I will post one section each week.

Here below is the introduction.

     The last decade has seen a tremendous amount of attention focused on boys and literacy. Middle through high school aged boys have landed in the Petri dish of education reform that formerly incubated the increase in math and science literacy efforts of girls. Now that girls are showing considerable progress in those areas, the emphasis has shifted to boys and their retarding literary skills. Controversy, and indeed “gender wars”, has surrounded this shift of attention. Some educators have suggested that the new spotlight placed on boys is merely another attempt to reinscribe male privilege. Educational reform has polarized into camps that assign or reject the notions of feminine characteristics of English literacy and the subsequent impact on boys. The result of this gender equity undercurrent is twofold. On the one hand it helps highlight the issue of boys and literacy, much like an unfortunate series of intersection fatalities highlights the need for a traffic light. On the other hand the emphasis on gender empowerment draws energy away from a genuine desire to explore creative strategies to improve the literacy skills of all students and boys in particular. Just as a tide lifts all boats, the most useful scholarship in educational reform is that which raises the effectiveness of teachers, librarians, administrators, and parents, and results in more literate adolescents instilled with a life-long love of reading and writing. Toward that end, and recognizing that boys are falling behind, there is an obvious need for change. Many of the authors involved in this research refer to a need for a paradigm shift among educators to meet the challenges of boys and literacy. The innovative change that might be initiated could easily be hampered by bureaucratic lethargy and fear, due in part to the current atmosphere of accountability and standardization. Nevertheless, clearly the task is to raise literacy among boys through new and creative strategies based upon sound education principles that speak to equity of access to information and negate notions of privilege.