Book Review Tuesday:

The Trouble with Boys: A Surprising Report Card on Our Sons, Their Problems at School, and What Parents and Educators Must Do

Peg Tyre (Author)

Intro – Amazing Statistics.  Recommended Books:

            Michael – Raising Cain: Protecting the emotional life of boys

            Michael Gurian – The minds of Boys

Chapter 1 – Interesting that one school found that boys & girls really started separating (in many ways) around 4^th grade.  But some differences appeared much sooner.

Chapter 2 – There are admittedly more physiological problems with young boys but still this doesn’t account for all of the differences seen in boys.  Suicide stats for boys are alarming! http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/ltt/results2004/

Chapter 4 – Very emotionally charged up to this point.  I agree that some preschools are unrealistic in their expectations, but I also think too many parents send their kids away, continue with their careers and are not engaged with their kids.

Chapter 6 – The focus of early education has changed.  While trying to help with standardized testing, testing forces teachers into a drill-it-till-you-kill-it method and less or no hands on learning which is better for many young boys.

Chapter 8 – ADHD.  I was surprised to find that there is no objective medical test for ADHD diagnosis, it is very subjective.  NIH says 3.5% of population has ADHD.  This condition was hardly (or never) heard of before 1950.  From 2000-2005, the number of boys from birth – 19 years old diagnosed with ADHD went up 48%!  Either we are witnessing the largest pandemic in the last 100 years, or it is being over diagnosed.

Recommends book: Robert Fletcher – Boy Writers – Reclaiming their Voices.

Chapter 13 - Very good and fairly balanced coverage of Video Games and how they affect boys.

Chapter 17 – At school we isolate boys.  Also at home they are isolated with the US Census Bureau stating that 30% of boys don’t live with their biological fathers.  Some say sports are the answer to engaging males in school.  I was disappointed and surprised by the statistic in the book that only 17 states require academic eligibility for their sports.  In addition, only 3 states have a one F and your benched rule.