For Boys, Literature Often Not so Classic ; A Task Force Suggests a Number of Strategies for Closing the Gender Gap in Reading.

By KEVIN WACK Staff Writer

Books can be keys to a different world, but the centuries-old literature assigned in Tanner Howard’s high school English class often leaves the 16-year-old feeling like a lost tourist.

Classics such as “Macbeth” and “The Canterbury Tales” are no fun to read, he said. They’re work.

“I’m not really into the things we read at school,” Howard said. “I’d rather just read a good story.”

Howard is a junior who plays on Portland High School’s lacrosse team. He likes to read the sports pages, and he used to read a lot of Michael Crichton thrillers.

“I have been reading less and less,” he said.

Howard has taken the same path as many Maine boys.

A report released last week by a statewide task force found boys significantly trailing girls on the reading section of the Maine Educational Assessment.

Over a four-year period starting with the 2000-2001 school year, the number of 11th-grade girls who met or exceeded the state’s reading standards was 15 percentage points higher than the number of boys.

The report’s authors also found that the gender gap in reading grows dramatically between fourth and eighth grades, which suggests that something important is happening, or not happening, during that part of a child’s reading development.

In addition, the report concludes that while girls tend to be more concerned with pleasing their parents and teachers, boys often are less motivated to study unless they are interested in the material.

Richard Kent, a University of Maine education professor who has written about how to teach reading to boys, was part of the research team that compiled the report.

Kent noted in a prior interview that many school-age boys are less interested in novels than in nonfiction and how-to texts.

He has witnessed this phenomenon both as a former high school teacher and as an adolescent who had little interest in reading.

“I never read a book in high school,” Kent said.

The task force’s 61-page report suggests a number of strategies for engaging boys as readers.

It recommends choosing books that interest students, even at the expense of the literary canon.

One suggestion is to offer students more choice in reading materials, including magazines, graphic novels, comic books and science fiction.

Another idea is to encourage students to help create classroom libraries with a broad range of reading options – everything from screenplay manuscripts to brochures for ski resorts.

Some Maine schools have been looking for ways to make reading more attractive to boys.

At Portland High, English teachers make an effort to teach boy- friendly books, said Principal Michael Johnson.

He gave the example of John Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men,” a tale of itinerant ranch hands during the Great Depression that appeals to adolescent boys.

“So as a result, it’s mandatory reading for everyone in the sophomore class,” Johnson said.

The statewide task force was formed in 2004 to study the lagging academic achievement of boys, but it soon decided to look more broadly at gender equity.

Its final report contains recommendations on how to help both boys and girls. For example, the report suggests ways to encourage more boys to go to college, as well as ways to encourage girls to consider careers in math and science.

The report also notes that there are significant gaps in classroom achievement based on socioeconomic status, and it cautions against placing too much emphasis on gender at the expense of other factors in explaining student performance.

The task force’s decision to study both boys and girls has drawn criticism from some advocates for boys.

Lisa Plimpton, who served on the task force and works as director of research at the Mitchell Institute in Portland, said that when she joined the task force, she was new to gender issues, and she didn’t expect the group’s work to be viewed through a political lens.

“I was surprised at how much of a nerve it seems to touch,” Plimpton said.

The task force first convened in March 2004 and originally planned to release its report in October of the same year. But the document’s release was delayed several times.

Now that the report is finished, the Maine Department of Education plans to invite educators to discuss gender issues at four daylong workshops. The regional workshops are expected to be held this fall.

The report’s recommendations on reading comes as welcome news to some teenage boys, who said in interviews that they’d like to read a wider variety of books, rather than just character-driven novels.

“I wish they would give more choice,” said Micah Malenfant, a 17- year-old junior at Portland High who enjoys historical books and realistic fiction.

Howard said it’s important to read Shakespeare and other classics. But he also noted that he didn’t understand certain passages in “Macbeth” unless his teacher explained them or he read them three times.

“It’s almost like a different language,” Howard said, referring to the English of bygone eras. “We could do that and we could also do books that we want to read.”

Staff Writer Kevin Wack can be contacted at 791-6365 or at:

kwack@pressherald.com

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