Tuesday Mashup (2/5/08)

A full-page ad appeared in the New York Times last week for the NRDC, and I’m just trying to give their cause a plug here; their Action Fund is trying to get Bushco to halt its proposed slaughter of gray wolves in Greater Yellowstone (the blight and pestilence from this bunch continues).

Remember back when John McCain’s campaign was floundering and it looked like Rudy! was the presumptive Repug nominee for president (had me fooled a bit, I’ll admit), with The Mittster just kind of hanging around and Huckabee largely written off as a joke (my bad again there)? And remember when McCain tried to portray himself as a reformer by being the only candidate besides John Edwards who accepted public campaign financing?

Well, it looks like McCain has figured a way to weasel out of that, as noted here (h/t Atrios).

This Yahoo News opinion from January 11th (sitting around for awhile I know - sorry I'm just getting to it now) tells us that writer Jon Scieszka was named as a reading ambassador by the Library of Congress; Scieszka is the award-winning author of The Stinky Cheese Man And Other Fairly Stupid Tales. He was appointed to address the growing gender gap in this country concerning literary skills between young boys and young girls (boys are falling behind).

As the opinion notes…

In Illinois this fall, state reading tests revealed broad gender gaps in reading. At one Cook County elementary school, girls' scores topped boys' by up to 55 percentage points.

Once boys fall behind in reading skills, it carries through the rest of their academic careers. Diminished literacy makes it harder for them to earn college degrees or compete in today's economy.

So…

(Scieszka’s) message: Don't think of reading as just the classics. Young boys celebrate the gross and the weird, so why not exploit that to get them hooked on reading? Books scoffed at by purists, such as Dav Pilkey's Captain Underpants series, have a place in classrooms.

And if you want to get an idea of how this issue can compound itself, this tells us that…

Recent federal testing data show that what starts out as a modest gap in elementary-level reading scores turns into a yawning divide by high school. In 12th grade, 44% of girls rate as proficient readers on federal tests, compared with 28% of boys. And while boys still score slightly higher on federal math and science exams, their advantage is slipping.

Most startling is that little is being done to correct the imbalances. All of the major players — schools, education colleges and researchers — largely ignore the gender gap. Instead of pursuing sound solutions, many educators merely advocate prescribing more attention-focusing Ritalin for the boys, who receive the drug at four to eight times the rate of girls, according to different estimates. "Too often the first reaction to an attention problem is 'Let's medicate,' " says Rockville, Md., child psychologist Neil Hoffman. "Some schools are quick to recommend solutions before they've fully evaluated the problem."

Ugh…

This isn’t about denigrating the accomplishments of young girls, by the way – not in any way, shape or form. It’s about trying to help boys catch up since, traditionally, girls mature earlier anyway when it comes to this stuff and many other ways as well.

If anyone has any doubt about how important it is to read to your kids and encourage their own reading (particularly boys), the Scieszka story should erase that for good. And it doesn’t matter if it’s a comic book, cereal box, or instructions on a box of Legos. You won’t just be helping them to do their best in school, but you’ll be helping them to live the best lives they can also.