Stop Limiting Our Boys

What really shocked me from this week’s readings was how much we really limit our male students.  Williams wrote a fantastic article called, Boys may be boys, but do they have to read and write that way?, that I truly loved.  I felt that it was so eye-opening and interesting and it really made me realize and recognize things that I didn’t before even though I now realize they are things that I have been seeing happen for years.

Throughout my schooling I did realize that most of the texts that teachers picked I found to be quite boring and I couldn't really fully relate to them.  I didn't realize until much later that this was probably because I was a female student.  Most of the literature that teachers pick to read with their students tend to be really aimed towards male students and therefore it tends to be much easier for them to relate to.  Through this, one would think that literacy in our schools is really catering to our male students, but this seems to be far from true.

It is true that male students tend to be more into video games and computers.  Because of this, boys tend to gravitate more towards liking action and violence.  This is not to say that these students are actually violent, but it is something that they have found that has caught their attention and really drawn them in.  This is something that seems to really frighten teachers.  They are scared to allow any type of writing about violence into their classrooms, but by doing that, are really limiting our male students.  I have seen teachers give assignments in which they allow students to write about whatever interests them (a pick your own topic type assignment) but they limit this and say that students cannot write about things that are violent.  Isn't that confusing?  If that's what interests these boys, and the assignment is to write about what interests you, why is that suddenly taken away from them?  Williams writes, "However, the conversations these researchers have had with boys ab out their reading and writing do indicate that, although boys are drawn to books, writing, and popular culture that emphasize action and sometimes violence, they can distinguish between the page and reality..." (Williams, 512).  This shows that our male students understand the difference and there seems to be little to no reason as to why the things that interest them shouldn't be allowed in the classroom.

Very similar to this, Jonathan Turley writes an article (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/23/AR2007022301749.html) about why we shouldn't limit our boys during play.  This also has to do with violence and can relate back to literacy in that perhaps we don't get our boys enough credit, maybe they know the difference between what is real and what isn't and we just need to give them the benefit of the doubt and support their ideas to let them read and write about the things that they like.