Filling The Reading Gap

Public school teachers have been bemoaning the decline in reading skills for years. At least one teacher is trying to do something about it. “For two years I taught GED classes in a state prison,” Jeff Minick writes in the September 2012 issue of Chronicles magazine. “When asked, my prison students recalled losing interest in school in the third or fourt grade, those same years when reading and writing become vital to a student’s classroom success.”

So Jeff got proactive. “Here in Asheville I offer seminars in Latin, literature, and history to homeschooled students,” Minick states.  He urges parents to be wary of current wisdom.

“Faced with sons whose academic performances have fallen behind sisters or their female peers, and taught by experts that boys develop more slowly than girls, some parents I know buy into the excuse that ‘boys will be boys,’ and that they mustn’t be pushed too hard,” Minick writes. “The same mother who urges her daughters to excel and who delights in their accomplishments will excuse her sons’ lack of diligence because ‘they are boys.’”

“The lowered expectations cause enormous and unnecessary damage. The game is lost before it begins.”

Malcolm A. Kline is the Executive Director of Accuracy in Academia.

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