🚀 go-pugleaf

It's not always a deficiency that describes the reason for a behaviour that
is different to the expceted one.  Boys differ in their development
regarding physical behaviour.  For many young lads who perhaps have an
equivalent level of potential ability to read novels to their female
counterparts, there are social pressures and networks (and a good few
hormones) that encourage them to be actively exploring their world.  (well
in a world where these needs are not met by electronic games).

Is there good data out there of the time factor in reading (total time, time
per session, and time frame used for reading)?


"Alberto Moreira" <junkmail@moreira.mv.com> wrote in message
news:3eb0ba59.1251719@news.mv.net...
> Said  Bob LeChevalier <lojbab@lojban.org> :
>
>
> >Time spent per unit of action.  When there is WWF (or Power Rangers at
> >the younger age) on television, it is hard to find a book with that
> >level of action per unit of time.  Comic books can emulate it because
> >you can read them FAST.
>
> Not every boy is action oriented, in fact, look around yourself and
> you'll find plenty of boys doing lots of things that are far from
> action oriented. Also, watching the WWF or the Power Rangers isn't my
> idea of being action oriented - that's more like being a spectator.
> Want action ? Join the school's wrestling team, now, THAT'S action.
> But you know, male egos are fragile and easily bruised, and what your
> typical boy wants is action enough that he shines, but not enough that
> he has to face the fact that there's plenty other boys out there who
> could give him a jolly good ride for his money. Hence kids cop out
> into watching TV, "I AM a Power Ranger", yes, in his mind. But go do
> it in real life, well, that's a very different story. The jocks manage
> it, and they're proud enough that they have conquered that ghost, and
> they turn their pride on those who could not.
>
> I have a theory, that if I want more intellectual work from a boy, I
> should start by taking care of his physical side. Mens sana in corpore
> sano !
>
> >From what I've seen, at the age where boys stop reading, girls get
> >extremely interested in social interaction as well as idealized love
> >and romance.  They are INTERESTED in spending time on observing
> >conversational interaction, even in print.  Boys at that stage are
> >more likely to want to move around, and have little interest in the
> >details of conversation.
>
> While many boys may not have much interest in conversation, it ain't
> necessarily so with reading. And boys don't like to interact
> face-to-face as much as they like to do it side-by-side; a boy's idea
> of conversation is often to do something together and interact while
> at it and through it: call it male bonding if you will. At the risk of
> sounding a bit sexist, I'll say that they must be presented with boy
> stuff - things that make boys tick. It's easy to find those, all we
> have to do is to know our kid. Does your kid like sailing ? Get books
> about sailboats. Better still, buy him his own sailboat, find a club
> nearby and enroll him in, so that he can interact with other boys who
> have similar interests. Does your kid enjoy the sea ? Get books about
> diving, get him to read Kon-Tiki or, when he's older, The Old Man and
> the Sea; learn to dive, get your kid to diving school, go dive
> together. Is your kid a bit on the intellectual side ? Introduce him
> to Sherlock Holmes, or throw the Lord of the Rings at him. Does your
> kid like natural science ? There's lots of material to be read, and
> heaps of activities to be engaged in right there at your backyard.
> Does your boy display a tinkering ability ? Teach him how to fix your
> car, give him car mechanics books, get him into carpentry.
>
> In a nutshell: intertwine reading with activity. That's the man's way,
> to be in control, to be doing it, to be commanding it, to be in
> control; we're not exactly a contemplative species, and any time you
> see a boy glued to a TV, there's got to be something missing.
>
> You see, reading is about a lot more than just gobbling easy to
> consume stories. Let me put it this way: I for example read a whole
> lot, yet very little of what I read doesn't require grad school math
> to be handled. Point being, be flexible and address the kid's
> interests, and he'll read.
>
> >My daughter reads more than my son, but neither likes "literature",
> >because the books that constitute literature do not cater to juvenile
> >tastes.
>
> Juvenile tastes evolve, and a kid that grows up in a literate
> environment becomes able to enjoy literature almost by default. My
> daughters for example could handle The Lord of the Ring by sixth grade
> or so - one of them, in fact, read so much that we ran out of titles
> to give her, after a while it was a problem finding anything she
> hadn't read. It is, I believe, a question of exposure over a long
> period of time. Nothing dramatic, nothing sensational, just a lifelong
> attitude. After a while, it automatizes and it stays. Also, it starts
> with us - my daughters read a lot because both I and my wife also read
> a lot, and because we adopted a style of life where reading is as
> natural as eating or watching TV.
>
> Then it gets to a point where the expectation is reversed: they don't
> like movies or TV because those lack the depth and the richness of
> detail that a book gives, and because a visual image prevents them
> from conjuring their own visions inside their own imagination. For
> example, my daughter reservedly liked the first movie of the Lord of
> the Rings, and she detested the second - both for the same reason,
> that the films invent things that don't exist in the book, fail to
> relate some important points that are in the book, miss a huge amount
> of detail, and delete fundamentally important dialogs. After reading
> Sherlock Holmes, her mind was so set on Conan Doyle's "superman"
> vision of Holmes that she could not stomach Jeremy Brett's
> interpretation, to her it was way too far from what the book says.
>
> And don't even ask what this boy read when he was a young teen, by the
> time I was fifteen or so I had already waded through a whole lot of
> Brazilian literature. It's a question of environment and habit !
>
>
> Alberto.
>