Teaching boys the power of the printed word

According to a trio of Flathead High School juniors, the perks of belonging to a book club are many.

There’s free pizza during the club’s monthly meeting.

Club members get to skip class to attend the meeting.

They get to talk about great books with other club members and might discover titles they’d never heard of before.

They frequently get to hang out with and read to kindergarten “buddies” from St. Matthew’s School, a surprisingly fun activity for the 28 boys in Flathead’s He-Man Book Club.

Juniors Dillon Larson, Keifer Wills and Jon Alan Osborne said they joined the boys-only club because they love to read and wanted to help little kids learn to read well. The boys are something of an anomaly; high-school boys generally aren’t known for their love of the written word.

But Flathead and other high schools in the valley are striving to change that attitude. It’s imperative that boys learn to read well, not necessarily because they lag behind girls (although research suggests they do), but because reading will be a vital skill for the rest of their lives.

Around the world, boys score lower on reading and writing exams than girls. In one reading exam given in 32 industrialized nations, including the United States, 15-year-old boys had lower reading scores than girls in every single country.

Literacy expert and self-proclaimed boys’ literacy advocate William Brozo cited similar research when he addressed the Northwest Montana Reading Council at the group’s annual meeting in August. According to Brozo, boys are more likely to need special reading services than girls, are less likely to use school or public libraries than girls and have stronger, less flexible reading preferences than girls.

Boys also often don’t see reading as something they can use in the “real world,” said Michele Paine, Kalispell Public Schools’ language arts facilitator.

“They disassociate reading as a practical, productive tool that they can use,” she said. “There’s a disconnect.”

There’s also the stereotype that reading is a girly or nerdy activity, Osborne said. “That’s not the ‘cool’ thing to do,” he said.

High school is all about spending time with friends, he added. “Everyone wants to hang out together, and reading’s not exactly a social activity.”

The He-Man Book Club, which celebrated its first anniversary this month, has changed that attitude to some extent. The boys aren’t reading together, or even reading the same book, but at least they’re talking about reading.

The club’s purpose is to help cultivate a “culture of literacy” at Flathead, said school Principal Peter Fusaro, the book club founder. He first floated the idea of forming a boys’ book club after reading Brozo’s research. When no one on staff jumped at the chance to start the club, Fusaro decided to take charge.

“After a good deal of discussion with staff and looking at the research, I realized that if we were going to create a culture of literacy at FHS, then it had to start with me,” he said.

The lack of male readers has been bemoaned by many as a contributing factor to boys’ lack of interest in reading. Most elementary school teachers are women, so early on boys start to associate reading as a female activity. Sometimes that attitude doesn’t change as the boys get older, Paine said.

“As they get older, they think of reading as more a girl thing than a boy thing,” she said. “We need to show kids more examples of men as readers so we can perhaps kind of change that perception of boys as readers.”

Literacy experts and educators also are beginning to re-examine the kinds of things boys are asked to read in school. Teachers often rely on fiction that doesn’t appeal to boys, said Pam Hughes, a Title I reading teacher at Columbia Falls High School.

“Sometimes they’re asked to read a lot of fictional material they don’t connect with,” she said. “Boys care more about action-oriented things. They tend to like true things.”

Fantasy is the exception and the one fiction genre that tends to cross gender lines, she said. Whitefish High School librarian Dan Kohnstamm agreed.

Kohnstamm and Title I aide Gene Gemignani co-founded a boys’ book club this fall in Whitefish. Kohnstamm and fellow librarian Julie Radtke already lead a readers club, but that group tends to draw more girls than boys, and Kohnstamm felt the need for a boys-only club.

It was inspired by Brozo’s research, which suggests that what boys read isn’t as important as the fact that they are reading. The boys’ club is “open as far as the different kind of reading material — books, magazines, newspapers,” Kohnstamm said. So far, just two boys have joined, but Kohnstamm is hopeful it will catch on.

“The students we have are really dedicated,” he said. “We’re just taking it and running with it.”

Paine said boys might be helped if literacy teachers redefined what makes a reader. Magazines and newspapers aren’t always considered “real” reading material, she said. Even if boys are reading those things, or reading online, they don’t receive credit for that reading and therefore don’t consider themselves readers.

Part of the problem is that teachers are bound by books and topics they have to teach, Paine said. They are held accountable for certain material, which doesn’t always allow for wiggle room in the books they choose.

It also can affect the way teachers cover the material, she said.

“I’ve been in those teachers’ shoes,” she said. “You think, ‘Oh my gosh, I know what the big ideas are, the important parts. How am I going to help the kids get the things I want them to get?’”

Often the solution is to give students a list of questions to answer or points to find in the text. Boys in the He-Man club said that was a turn-off to many would-be readers.

It’s hard to comprehend a story line when classes require you to look for specific items, Wills explained. Osborne agreed.

“It’s not a story” when students are asked to pick apart a chapter or a book, he said. “It’s another piece of work you have to analyze.”

In the He-Man book club, the boys commit to reading one book a month. While they do have to give a two-minute report on the book, it’s less time-consuming than an English assignment and the boys have room to actually enjoy the reading.

The format has attracted everyone from avid readers to boys who want to improve their reading skills, Fusaro said. Part of the attraction is allowing the boys to pick their own books, which range from fantasies to adventures to graphic novels.

“It’s whatever the kids want to read. Why would we not want to encourage that?” he said.

Reporter Kristi Albertson may be reached at 758-4438 or by e-mail at kalbertson@dailyinterlake.com