Why Boys Are Behind in Reading at Every Age | Hacker News Reader

Why Boys Are Behind in Reading at Every Age

nytimes.com

11 pointsmpweiher19 comments

Not so long ago, I heard some expert explain how language evolves in our societies. She said something along the lines of "if you want to know how language will change in a decade or two's time, go and listen to a group of 15 year old girls chatting".

I thought it was one of the most profound things I had heard in a long while. For example, it suggests the evolutionary driver for invention of language in humans lies in the interactions between women. It also suggests an explanation of why boys are usually behind girls in reading skills. As an aside, when that's brought up in mass media (presumably in an effort to sell clicks) it rarely mentioned boys are normally ahead of girls in other skills.

Teacher here. 30% of third graders here in michigan are illiterate. Not just not being able to read at grade level. Like illiterate period. How we do it generally across states is k to 2 is worksheet based instruction and 3-5 is entirely reading based. We started heavily drifting to computers after covid so these students can sometimes spend 3-4 hours everyday on iready etc. Any reading and work after third grade is usually done on computers in short passages. Thats the reason why students struggle with reading. Any other reason is bubbemisa or speculation.

I'm sure "Why Boys Are..." gets the clicks - but if you actually care about fixing the problem, in a country where gender differences & favoritism are political hot buttons, and even students at elite universities are poor readers - then maybe start by framing things differently?

What would you recommend?

How about saying that average reading performance is falling for all students? And that it's important to reverse that trend to have a better society.

Do you object to the headline for the same reasons as the person above? Do you have an issue with the article itself?

I’m not trying to be provocative. I’d only like to know what you think. If there’s a legitimate reason to single young men out in this issue then what’s wrong with that?

"...while average scores have declined for everyone, boys are doing much worse."

Put together a bunch of local focus groups of successful elementary school teachers - preferably ones who remember the "good old days", before how reading should be taught was prescribed by big-ego academics, consultants, ideologues, and politicians. (Ideally, the latter sorts would be lured off to some red herring project, that'll conveniently never get funded.)

Ask 'em to assemble short descriptions of "what actually works" for teaching reading. If they end up describing half a dozen approaches, which seem to work in different circumstances (kids, teacher, resources, etc.) - that's fine. Also ask for lists describing a dozen or two advantages and disadvantages - which help or hurt a kid's prospects for reading well - and simple ideas on how to encourage the former and fix or work around the latter.

Encourage the old teachers to leave off group identifiers. Let real-world parents and teacher reading their descriptions intuit that (say) #11 would apply to many lower-income non-white Catholic boys.

Try to put a strong "every child is an individual human being" slant on the whole thing. Far too much of the current focus is on partitioning kids into various "identity" castes, for the benefit of people who evidently thrive on caste warfare. If we can't magically ship all those folks off to some Planet Faraway, I don't have any great ideas for keeping them from storming into the classrooms and spoiling everything.

How does this result in better literacy rates and how might the educators and administrators prevent these new identifiers from forming into “castes” of their own? Can’t parents and teachers sort of gerrymand the program. Don’t children (like adults) want to bond over shared “identities”, individuality not withstanding?

My interpretation of your proposal is that each cohort is taught to read in a way that’s supposed to correspond to their respective strengths and weaknesses. In a way I don’t see how this is too far off from figuring out better ways to teach boys how to read; if a better way to teach girls is discovered in the process then is that okay with you even if both methods differ and say…learning had to take place in separate classrooms because of it? I don’t imagine the system you theorized would be any different with regard to separation.

I’m sure that in theory every cohort wouldn’t be a 1:1 match per teaching method, there would probably be some overlap, mixed classrooms so to speak, all getting taught the same way. But with so much emphasis being put on the eradication of “castes” it begins to feel like getting the kids to just be able to read is lost and used as a front for some other agenda.

Literacy rates in general are low and boys have typically done worse but in addition to other factors that might not have always been normal (e.g. low percentages of young men in college compared to women), the present decline will likely affect young men the most in the long run and if overall rates continue to decline young men when probably be only qualified to pick fruit and pack boxes, have sex and play games for a living. Until the thrill of the last two wear off. It doesn’t take a long perusal through the news and history books to see how society is shaped by the decisions and dispositions of men. They’ve seen other “identities” (borrowing your quote marks) over the last few years receive attention and treatment in some fashion. If no one is willing to give them the same opportunities then enjoy the Nick Fuentes/Nicki Minaj administration in 2032.

It doesn't.

"...while average scores have declined for everyone, boys are doing much worse."

And it definitely doesn't get the resources.

"But in contrast with efforts to encourage girls in math and science, which have helped shrink their achievement gap with boys, little attention or effort has been focused on improving boys’ reading skills."

We've been framing things the same way for decades now, ignoring boys. Maybe it is time to frame things differently.

Unless you also think that boys just don't matter.

Sadly, it sounds like you're all-in on making it a zero sum, us-vs.-them game. If not declaring a war over resources in the Education-Industrial Complex, then condemning anyone who's reluctant to take up arms for your cause.

Vs. over 100 years ago, my grandmother taught 1st through 8th grades. In a one-room schoolhouse. Rural community - maybe 1% of parents had been to college. Annual per-student funding was $50-ish. Grandma's teaching credentials were, at best, a 2-year "Normal School" degree. The School District's Superintendent was probably 1/4 time or less, with zero administrative staff.

And yet the vast majority of grandma's students left her 8th grade able to read at that level. Old family stories from the era have neither "boys vs. girls" subtexts, nor zero-sum worldviews.

Nope, the only one making it a zero-sum us-vs.them game is you.

The article noted that there is a large gap, and that it is widening.

This obviously calls for measures to help boys close that gap, measures that haven't been taken for decades.

Any measures to correct an overall decline in reading are unaffected by this. Nobody called for general reductions or reductions for girls.

Only you came and denied that boys should receive help when they are facing a disadvantage.

Why?

Why is the idea of boys getting help so completely und unacceptably horrible for you?

Interesting story about your grandma in the olden days, but has nothing to do with the topic at hand.

Nobody holds teachers and school administrators accountable. If administrators' bad policies were persistently criticized and mocked at the school level by students, and adminsitrators' families were scorned for supporting local failure and degeneration, districts would change..

https://archive.is/VMyp4

> "Teach in small groups."

this advice sounds like it could fix many, many other issues as well?

Except the scaling ones..

(Where I went to school, they taught us, parallel to reading, how to analyse propaganda. You can imagine the unintended consequences XD)

Yeah, the scaling is very unfortunate; maybe if AI puts everyone out of work we'll have enough teachers? (that's a joke: my understanding is that there's a knee at a 1:12 ratio that may not be as good as an Oxbridge 1:2 but certainly would've improved upon the 1:30+ classrooms of my youth)

Were you also fortunate enough to have Alisa Seleznyova in your classes, or was that part of general ed? Where I went to school, I had to rely on MAD magazine for propanal instruction! (subscription thankfully provided by the same parents who'd ensured my basic literacy before entrusting me to K-12)

You mean prpaldehyde

Btw:

Ehud-kun had a Spidey sense for the (entirely incidental?) but deeprooted Slavic flexhumility/low-expressivity

https://archive.ph/2026.02.07-024423/https://www.aljazeera.c...

(Let me go and lolsob now :)

Teachers unions have led to promotions and raises for bad teachers, and demotivation for good teachers. https://www.heritage.org/education/commentary/new-naep-test-...

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