Where’s Richard Whitmire when you need him? A pair of Wall Street Journal articles raise interesting questions about boys, reading, engaging reluctant readers…and sports trivia. A Page One piece by John Hechinger points out what just about every elementary school teacher figures out 20 minutes into the job: if you want to see a boy engaged with a book, slip him any of the burgeoning genre of gross-out books.
Publishers are hawking more gory and gross books to appeal to an elusive market: boys — many of whom would rather go to the dentist than crack open “Little House on the Prairie.” Booksellers are also catering to teachers and parents desperate to make young males more literate. ‘There has been a real revolution’ in books that ‘have more kid appeal,’ especially when it comes to boys, says Ellie Berger, who oversees Scholastic’s trade division. ‘It’s a shift away from the drier books we all grew up with.’
The bottom line, the kind of book you used to sneak into school, and hoped not to get caught reading, has gone mainstream. So is “Captain Underpants” the only way to turn boys into readers? More to the point, is all reading created equal? Does time spent with ”Sir Fartsalot Hunts the Booger?” help reading comprehension? As a teacher, I’m all for engaging boys, but a steady diet of this fare invites the law of diminishing returns.
In an unrelated WSJ piece, “Raising Bob Costas: Is Memorizing Sports Trivia Good for the Brain?” James Freeman frets that his son is spending all of his time memorizing sports trivia, and hopes to find an academic silver lining in this obsession from neuroscientists, Harvard’s Howard Gardner, and Core Knowledge founder E.D. Hirsch, Jr.
I figured that if anyone would trash the idea of kids consuming trivia it would be Hirsch but he found reasons to appreciate Will’s hobby. The University of Virginia professor recalled the line from Keats that “every thing is worth what it will fetch, so probably every mental pursuit takes its reality and worth from the ardour of the pursuer.” Mr. Hirsch said that it’s great to find an interest like Will’s because “it means you like to do something intensely, and you’re more likely to be successful in life” when you do. But Mr. Hirsch was not suggesting that learning about football had any value at all in helping one to learn about academic subjects. “I don’t think there’s any benefit as far as ‘learning-to-learn,’ because that’s been exploded.”
I’m with Freeman’s kid. When I was his age, I could tell you from memory the teams who plated in every World Series ever played. Numbers invariably invoked baseball statistics: 367, 511 and 714? Ty Cobb’s liftime batting average, Cy Young’s career wins and the number of homerun Babe Ruth hit, respectively.
But you knew that.
Update: Sir Fartsalot author Kevin Bolger weighs in below in the comments section.
“Does time spent with ‘Sir Fartsalot Hunts the Booger?’ help reading comprehension?”
Well, I am the author of “Sir Fartsalot” and a reading teacher myself — teaching four grade 2-6 classes per day in Ottawa, Canada. Where my school happened to have the highest literacy scores in the area (population about 1 million) over a five-year period. And placed among the top 30 schools in Ontario for same span. And my students would probably tell you all we ever did was read silly books.
Why don’t you take a minute to actually read the excerpt from Sir Fartsalot on the website http://www.sirfartsalot.com? You will find it is not so full of trashy toilet humor as you (quite naturally) suppose.
Thanks.
Comment by Author Kevin Bolger — August 11, 2008 @ 11:55 am
I have no doubt that Sir Fartsalot is a great read. It’s the “all we ever did was read silly books” part that gives me pause. As I hope I made clear, I felt that my first job as a teacher was to get kids engaged with reading; to have them find fun and joy in developing a relationship with the printed word. But that’s the starting line. While I never stopped my students from reading Captain Underpants for fun, the mischief comes, I think, when we let engagement drive reading choices and instructional choices. I think we shortchage students when we simply assume kids will be disengaged by good books, and therefore don’t make the effort to engage them. Good teachers make all kinds of fictions come alive. It’s the rare 4-6 grade boy who can’t find himself caught up by Gary Paulsen’s Hatchet, or Jerry Spinelli’s Maniac Magee. There are tons of books that are challenging, accessible and boy-friendly.
Comment by Robert Pondiscio — August 11, 2008 @ 1:28 pm
This raises an interesting question in my mind: could one generate a list of desiderata for school reading? I agree with Kevin (and with you ) that the surface content is a poor guide. I’m confident a great grossout book could be written and I *know* that some apparently valuable historical fiction is actually pretty vapid. Probably such lists exist. . .
Comment by Dan Willingham — August 11, 2008 @ 4:40 pm
Such lists are legion. Here’s the problem though: There’s a tremendous premium placed on students self-selecting their books for reading workshops. It’s standard practice in NYC, where I taught, and elsewhere for students to have “minilessons” in reading strategies, then apply the strategy to their self-selected book. There are variations, of course — paired reading, literature circles, etc., but with the exception of steering children away from books that are beyond their “instructional” level, many teachers are discouraged from exercising too much control over the books students choose. Teachers have broader latitude in choosing whole class read alouds, which present a golden opportunity to introduce authors, genres, etc. that students might not self select.
Over the last half decdade, NYC has invested prodigiously in classroom libraries. My classroom had thousands of books across genres and reading levels. But Captain Underpants and Goosebumps were hardy perennials. I have no idea who or what agency determined what was suitable fare for my fifth graders; the overwheming majority of books suffered from uncracked spines. Fights broke out, however, over the Big Bad Battle of the Bionic Booger Boy.
Comment by Robert Pondiscio — August 11, 2008 @ 5:11 pm
You might want to take a look at Terry Dreary’s Horrible Histories Collection. The score high on the gross-out and the historical content factors. That’s win-win.
Comment by KDeRosa — August 12, 2008 @ 12:41 pm
I am sorry I have just discovered all this. My son is now 19 & reads rapidly & with pleasure. It was a struggle. He was in the 4th Grade when the first Harry Potter book came out. he couldn’t read it, though all his buddies had. I read it to him, along with the next 2 volumes — great fun for us both.
I shamelessly used Captain Underpants & anything else that would get him interested. I bought endless books that did not interest him. I finally happened on to a series of novels that got his interest (Sharpe’s Rifles, etc. by Bernard Cornwell. He was interested in the story & wanted to know how it ended. That got him motivated to read.
One must focus on the mission & set priorities. Learning to read rapidly & with the pleasure is the first order of business. What one reads is, of course, important — but not first. It is especially hard in schools that are not boy-friendly.
And, by the way, just where was the “Big Bad Battle of the Bionic Booger Boy” and “Captain Fartsalot” when I needed him? Actually, I bet my boy would still get a kick out of them.
Comment by John Schedler — August 13, 2008 @ 9:57 pm
Hirsch’s reference to Keats has made me more interested in Keats than in sports statistics!
Comment by Ralfy — August 23, 2008 @ 6:21 am