by Liam O’Donnell
Around the globe, boys and books just don’t seem to get along, and Canada is no different. Canadian literacy statistics show boys trailing girls when it comes to reading and writing. In 1998, 13-year-old Canadian girls scored higher than boys on literacy tests conducted by the Canadian Council of Ministers of Education (www.cmec.ca/saip/rw98le/pages/ResultsE.stm).
Girls also outperformed boys on writing tests, but Laura Sokal, an education researcher and professor at the University of Winnipeg, believes these numbers don’t tell the whole story. “Not all boys are failing in reading,” she insists, “but there is a problem.” Sokal and other Canadian education researchers are trying to see beyond the numbers, and, in some cases, into boys’ backpacks, to understand why boys consistently trail girls in reading and writing. These findings show that Canadian boys have a lot to teach us about literacy.
Many studies in Canada have highlighted the problem of falling literacy scores in Canadian boys, but Sokal and her colleague, Herb Katz, also from the University of Winnipeg, felt that these studies failed to address the diversity of needs among boys. “Different boys are not doing well for different reasons,” says Sokal.
One of the most trumpeted reasons for boys’ poor literacy scores is that they see reading as a girl’s activity. To explore this issue, Sokal and Katz conducted a survey of 70 grade-two boys in Winnipeg to determine what role gender plays in literacy.
Their study, “Masculine Literacy: One Size Does Not Fit All,” recently published in Reading Manitoba, found that 76% of the boys interviewed did not see reading as a feminine activity, and 73% enjoyed reading. While these numbers put a dent in the notion that all boys view reading as a girl’s activity, Sokal and Katz are quick to point out that the results also mean that, as early as grade two, 24% of boys already feel alienated from reading, and 27% have a negative attitude toward reading.
For the researchers, these numbers are a cause for concern. But just as there are many reasons for boys’ poor literacy performance, Sokal and Katz see many ways to improve the situation. One way is to offer boys a choice in their reading material. “Choice conveys ownership,” Sokal believes. For boys, being able to choose which book to read is almost as important as having access to the books themselves. Sokal argues that when boys feel they own their reading material, instead of having it picked out for them by an adult, their interaction with the text improves.
When given the choice, what do boys read and why? Heather Blair from the University of Alberta and Kathy Sanford from the University of Victoria spent two years talking to adolescent boys, delving into their backpacks and desks, looking to understand the modern meaning of literacy for adolescent boys. Their study, Canadian Adolescent Boys and Literacy (www.education.ualberta.ca/boysandliteracy/), looked at the “out of school” reading choices made by boys. They found that boys aren’t becoming illiterate; they’re redefining literacy as we know it.
“Boys are becoming literate in spite of school instruction,” says Blair. She and Sanford conducted “literacy digs” into the desks and backpacks of boys to learn more about their reading choices. What they found wasn’t surprising: sports and video game magazines, comic books, and collectable trading card games, such as Yu-Gi-Oh and Pokémon.
What intrigued Blair and Sanford was the way in which the boys interacted with these “out of school” literacy materials. While many educators don’t see video game magazines or collectable card games as positive reading choices, Blair and Sanford credit the boys with a sophisticated understanding of these multimodal, content-rich sources of information.
Boys scour these magazines to access video game cheat codes, to easily navigate websites and online game worlds, and to compare the statistics of their favorite trading card characters. This, say Blair and Sanford, is literacy in action.
As they watched boys display a complex literacy knowledge of their video games and trading cards, Blair and Sanford identified five common themes that hooked boys and kept them coming back for more:
personal interest
action
success
fun
purpose
Often, boys don’t find these elements in many of the traditional “in school” reading materials offered to them, and their behavior reflects this. When boys are given literacy assignments, they often doodle, daydream, or clown around. While some see this behavior as boys resisting activities that provide them with little interest, Blair and Sanford believe that boys are trying to connect with the schoolwork the only way they know how.
“Boys transform the assigned literacy work into something more fun, engaging, and personally meaningful for themselves,” says Sanford. “They liven up the activity by changing or converting the teacher’s instructions, adding elements of humor and satire, and using characters from their out-of-school literacies.” Many teachers already recognize this—that’s why a boy’s grade-six language arts assignment is more likely to be a series of comic strips than a written book report. But even with traditional literacy exercises, boys will draw upon their outside interests to make a connection.
Blair and Sanford call this “morphing” literacy, a term borrowed from the boys themselves: “Morphing is a word used by boys in their play to describe the transformation of one form or character to another.” As the boys morph their schoolwork to fit their interests—by using the words learned from their video game experiences, for example—they gain literacy skills that adults often don’t recognize or give them credit for.
As Canadian boys redefine the meaning of literacy, Blair, Sanford, Sokal, and Katz all agree that adults need to redefine the meaning of acceptable reading material. Magazines, comic books, and even some video games provide doorways to improved literacy for boys. While Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh don’t have the depth of The Hobbit or Treasure Island, the researchers are confident that they can be used as springboards to these more traditional materials. Recognizing the new face of literacy and providing boys with springboard materials is a key to fostering book-reading boys. It may also help ensure that the next round of literacy scores tells a very different story.
Liam O’Donnell is the author of several books for reluctant readers and creator of the Max Finder Mystery comic strip, appearing monthly in Owl Magazine. He can be found online at www.liamodonnell.com.
Are Canadian boys redefining literacy? by Liam O’Donnell. (February 2005). Reading Today, 22(4), 19.
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