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posted by Scott on Friday September 13, @03:06PM
from the boys/young-men dept.
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Rams forwarded me this article about an English professor at the University of New Hampshire who has taken a close look at boys and literacy. Prof. Thomas Newkirk argues that instead of viewing popular culture as of no intellectual value, that in the case of boys and reading, it can be a very important influence: "Newkirk interviewed 100 boys and girls in third, fourth and fifth grades in New Hampshire schools for the book, and discovered that sports, movies, video games and other venues of popular culture are a powerful way to encourage young boys to read and write. In his book, Newkirk argues against the simplistic stereotype of boys, showing that rather than mimic violence, boys most often transform, recombine and participate in storylines, and resist the unreality of popular culture." Newkirk has written a book on this subject, Misreading Masculinity: Boys, Literacy, and Popular Culture, that many MANN readers might want to check out.
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by Anonymous User on Friday September 13, @03:26PM EST (#1)
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Misreading Masculinity (the book) can be found here.
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In Japan there is a manga (japanese comics) called Shonen Jump (shonen means bos(s)). It was the lauching pad of a lot of the current and past pop fads and Japan and even here in North America. Things like Dragon, Pokemon, YuYu Hakusho, Yu-Gi-oh, and the list goes on. At its hight of popularity its publication numbers where 7 or 8 million or higher. Its numbers today are a little bit more "modest" of around 3-4 million (and its said that we guys don't have any "buying power"). Also Shonen is a weekly publication.
But next month Viz and the company the publishes Shonen will be bringing it to North American. With the exclusive targetting towards early and late teenage boys. The stories in Shonen might not be great examples of writing, but they do have things that appeal to boys in today's age. And would a good way at getting more boys to read.
http://www.shonenjump.com is the webpage for the North American publication.
This is an article that I found about the up coming release. Which has a brif mention of the hardships publishers have had targetting towards guys under 18.
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Didn't feminists have a lot of books removed from school on the grounds that they were 'sexist'? What do you want to bet that these were largely the kind of books boys liked to read.
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If someone wants to verify this, it's probably not too hard to do. Find a list of the books that they wanted removed, and see how many of them showed up on boys' reading lists up to that time, and then see how many of them are listed at places like GuysRead.com. I doubt you'll find that strong of a thread, though. Although, if you did, it might be further evidence of a conspiracy. Stack enough of these up against the feminists and you might have legitimate claims to violation of civil rights. You'd have to pursue it through civil courts, of course. No one in THIS government is going to risk re-election by prosecuting such a case in criminal court, even if they thought they could make the charges stick.
Frankly, I think there is a lot of evidence of discrimination against men and boys, and as I recall, the feminists had to initiate a lot of failed lawsuits before they finally saw some progress. The problem with men is that we're just not as interested in litigating such that there are enough of us willing to fund it. If we funded a few, though, and won one or two, then the lawyers and their contingency fees might stand up and listen, then we'd be in better shape: less up-front investment would be required to make a case.
I still think there's a case to be made on education: that in the classroom, there is CLEAR discrimination against boys, and that there is evidence of this discrimination in all universally-applied standardized tests. It would have to be a class-action suit, because it's entirely too easy to wiggle out of charges filed on behalf of just one boy. But the reality is there: Title IX is being applied in a discriminatory fashion by every state. The problem is that we'd have to fight this on a state-by-state basis. However, after the first few, the others would find a way to comply, or they'd fall like dominoes.
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