Someone said, 'There's no such thing as a child who's a reluctant reader, there's only the adult who hasn't yet found what he wants to read.'

Not sure I completely agree, but still... It doesn't help that most reading schemes are fiction, when we all know a lot of boys and men are chiefly turned on by non-fiction.

Emma

I think educationalists have recognised and are trying to address this, Emma. Both my sons learnt through a variety of fiction and non-fiction scheme books.

I used to question my purpose in life when I ran the school library in my second teaching job and all these boys came in to ask for the weapons books. They'd like to read in two or threes and fanatasise about future life in the military while they turned the pages. The library auxiliary, more cynical than me, kept these books locked away in the cupboard as otherwise, she told me, they'd be taken, never to be seen again. The other book they liked that was similarly rationed was The Guinness Book of Records. So I'm not sure reading is all it's cracked up to be, just as I'm not sure about the boy I encouraged to speak out then had to lock out of the classroom for racism -he was eventually expelled for swearing at the Head. I preferred him when he was sullen.

Sheila

Perhaps if they'd got into fiction, they'd have learnt to empathise more with other people.

Kate, you're right that the newer reading schemes and things try to get more non-fiction in, I remember noticing as my son was learning.

Yes, they do love their weapons, and it's pretty unappealing, though I must admit my son's taste in light fiction rather tends towards the Bravo-Two-Zero stuff. But then he's at that awkward teenage stage where children's books aren't substantial enough, but the equivalent adult ones are too complex: popular adult fiction seems to be the only possibility. (I discovered Georgette Heyer at the same age). Which isn't to say that he didn't twist my arm to buy him HP yesterday, and he's no doubt swallowed it whole.

Anyone else read Francis Spufford's The Child That Books Built? Absolutely fascinating stuff, and he, as a mad, passionate reader, recognises that stage too.

Emma

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My daughter adores The Guinness Book of Records, and pointed out that it never occurred to anyone to give it to her, though my son had several editions. So I did.

Ripley's Believe it Or Not is another winner in the same general bracket!

Maybe this anti-fiction thing with boys is understandable. The imagery and function power of computer games now enables a skilled player to create his own narratives. That these are nearly all horrendously violent etc is a different issue - though serious and pretty deep. But to get excited at someone else's single structured, fictional narrative seems to me pretty low powered against what it's up against.

It would be interesting to research the reading patterns (or not) of boys who are and those who are not into computer games.

On the non-fiction front again a useful pointer from my son: I discovered a certain kind of cross-genre book that he took to and it even included some fiction. He loved all non-fiction or fiction that involved preparation for something - an expedition, a battle, a project etc. He identified with the details of what I guess in business or engineerng terms would be called project planning. Maybe part of the appeal of this was that the use of intelligence to plan can give the edge, the power over brute force which I guess worries lots of kids especially boys nowadays. In movies he loved The Magnificent Seven which is all planning set-up and then execution. It also spilled into his then favourite movie, The Usual Suspects which is heavily plotted with a great twist. Also for the same reasons Sixth Sense and other 'surprise-ending' movies.

The intellectual and educational value of such movies is that they engage boys especially in something that culturally they have come to seriously lack - the ability to deal with deferred satisfaction. A computer game that doesn't smack you in the face every few seconds with some strong experience isn't going to get far. So maybe part of the trouble is that a generation especially of boys who would benefit from cleverly plotted books with surprise endings have grown up with a generation of writers amongst whom the traditional plotting skills of earlier popular fiction no longer dominate.

Complicated issue. But I have a hunch, much as I hate it, that while we are all complimenting girls on their non-stop academic overhaul of boys, it might just be that they are demonstrating a better expertise at meeting old criteria of applied intelligence. I'm not sure that computer games are'nt developing a different kind of practical thinking in boys that will stand them in better stead for this weird culture we seem to be developing around us.

Any way. Intersting thread. Makes one think.

regards

Z

I'd be interested to know whether computer games being readily available in a lot of households has affected reading full stop. My sons both play a lot on their PS2s, but they also read for pleasure, fight, run round the garden, bother insects, make books - they just pack a lot in. Your theory about deferred excitement sounds right, but I don't know whether it translates into practice (and if so, over what age range/social class/household type/geographical or cultural area). I bet parents reading is one of the biggest factors in whether kids learn to like fiction (though it's not an unbreakable rule, by any means). I have heard it's important for boys to see men reading as they grow up, otherwise there's a risk they'll get to a point and decide reading's cissy (no idea whether that's true or not as I can't remember my source).

Kate

Now you're taking it deeper. The 'cissy', and male-model-for-reading thoughts pose the question of whether the tendency of boys, specifically, not reading is more a crisis of masculinity than simply one of not-reading. There is an alarming culture it seems growing within some schools that not just things like reading are cissy but that doing well at school academically at all is somehow cissy or 'soft'. Plus an even more disturbing tendency to use 'gay' and associated language as abuse. Even more alarming to me is the increasing tendency for 'laddettes' to emulate these values.

All my adult life has covered the period from the 60's on from what was called women's liberation. No I'm not on the usual male schtick of always blaming women for male failures. But being a father of a boy and a girl (23 and 27 respectively) the great merit of this period was that there was no problem as a man about my role model for my daughter: I could simply throw everything at her irrespective of gender. She didn't have to conform to old stereotypes of femininity. So I did all the 'boy' things with her as well. Apologies, but I taught her to throw a stone properly, use a frisbee, play snooker (exceptionally well), even a bit about football theory just to shock the boys! Easy peasy. Only a few women would have problems with any of that.

But exactly what kind of model was one supposed to offer a boy? 'New' Man, gentle, involved, considerate/ In the biggest myth of gender, one 'in touch' with his emotions? Or a male model that acknowledged aggression, competitiveness as a genetic, evolutionary and essential part of masculinity? I guess being into sport and philosophy I just followed what had happened with me but adapted it to try to pass on the thought that liking women in general was in many ways as important as loving one in particular. And the rest. That my son always had lots of female friends before he had a partner seems to me to be a sort of success. Down to him rather than me of course. That he also loves skateboarding, surfing, ideas and movies has meant in the end it was easy for me. (Didn't seem like it at the time).

For some time it seems to me the way we raise boys certainly in the UK has been problematic. And the issues above of which hostility not just to reading but to all forms of traditional academic attainment, may be part of the consequence. Where it exists (and no of course it's not universal, thank goodness) the well-established trend of girls out-performing boys by traditional educational measures simply adds petrol to an already fiercely burning fire.

A long way from reading. Or perhaps not. I'll leave it there.

regards

Z

(God I hate how reactionary this sounds!)

I agree with you, and I don't think you sound reactionary at all. Raising boys, re the areas you identify, is extremely tricky. I'd like to say more, but I don't want to go into more personal details of my family life on a public board. It sounds as though you did a great job, though!

Zettel, I think what you say about planning and deferred satisfaction is fascinating and absolutely right: think of Heroes of Telemark, which surprises me every time by how little is action in the crude sense, and how much is about secretly getting to the point where the action starts. Day of the Jackal, too, is one long To Do list, as I recall.

I've got one of each - 13 and 16 now - and I remember very clearly how difficult it was to find role models for my small son which reflected the positive side of the traditional masculinities. We ended up with a lot of firemen and lifeguards around the place. There's an argument, too, that primary education is very feminised, and there's not enough space or time for big-muscle stuff and noise... See Steve Biddulph's Raising Boys. But I also think that each child will make of the usual stuff what their temperament prompts them to. We have somehow acquired a small - no, a large - platoon of khaki-clad Action Men, complete with a hanger's worth of vehicles and blood-curdling weapons. But in my son's hands it was never about war, and rarely about fighting. It's usually about daring escalades of the banisters in order to catch a baddy or rescue a comrade, and what he would tell you is a synopsis of a plot any of us would be proud of.

And, much to my surprise, I've realised that the school army cadets, which is totally not my scene or his father's, have provided a really good education in all that stuff about planning and deferring, and channelling aggression and adrenalin rather than suffocating it or letting it loose.

Though there's nothing new about it being called cissy to work hard at school - ask any school boy circa 1890, or indeed my mother at a girls' boarding school in 1945.

Emma

Zettel, I'm not sure that planning is all that masculine, but maybe that's not what you are saying. I love planning. I agree about the fascination of all the preparation in 'Day of the Jackal', especially the disguise and the forging of passports. All those prisoner-of-war escape movies my dad took me to in the fifties and sixties had the same attraction- making fake Nazi uniforms and maps of the camps so the tunnels emerged beyond the fences. You have to ask what the planning is for, though. In some things, like stalking, or on a more universal level planning to invade another country, it's maybe not such a good thing. The best that can be said is it does slow things down, but the result might be all the more deadly.

Sheila

I think in some ways planning is just one kind of orderliness and ordering-ness which appeals hugely to children. Think of all those small child books which are lists of things for the seaside, the chanty ones where each page leads to the next, or the ones about doing some process with Mum or Dad: Laura and Pa in Little House in the Big Woods, building their house log by log. How about a thoroughly 'girly' book: Rumer Godden's Miss Happiness and Miss Flower which describes every detail of how the heroine builds a Japanese dolls' house for them.

Or indeed the books which involve magic, which is another kind of orderliness. I read a very convincing argument that they're usually to do with working and then using the magical rules (E Nesbit, for instance, and anyone else love Edward Eager?), which is a bottom a mirroring of the way all children have to work out and learn to use the rules of the adult world.

Emma

It's a long time since I read any children's books, Emma, but it all sounds very convincing. It hadn't occurred to me before.

Sheila

I seem to have passed the point of no return. I've just set aside Un Lun Dun by China Mieville. It's brilliant, of course, but the juvenile nature of the literature just doesn't appeal right now and I found it very difficult to get into.

JB

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I had the same problem with Abarat by Clive Barker.