Relevance to Book 1

Our first book discussion was based on "Reading Don't Fix No Chevy's: Literacy in the Lives of Young Men" by Michael Smith. It dealt with the unfortunate fact that boys fail to read as much as girls both in and out of school. The prevalence of boys in upper-level English classes compared to girls is drastically different as well as their overall negative connotation towards reading. Girls tend to not only like to read more but acknowledge its overall importance in their lives. Boys view literacy as an unwelcome aspect of school and life in general because as they see it, there is no purpose behind most literary works. Boys favor the instruction manuel and how-to side of reading due to the actual tangible outcome such pieces provide whereas girls will read "for fun" disregarding a need for achievement afterwards.

This is undoubtedly seen at the PLC. My first time stepping into the classroom, I noticed the lack of gender differences in the English class I was placed in. I could count on one hand the number of boys in the room whereas the girls occupied most of the seats. I noticed this around the school itself also, waiting outside, wandering the halls, girls greatly outnumbered the boys. The girls in the class were easily motivated and willing to work whereas I could overhear other tutors and the teachers struggle to complete work with the boys. Although girls I worked with acknowledged the lack of purpose of the poetry or short story, they attempted it without hassle or fuss. The girls I worked with knew that by completing the seemingly unimportant tasks they would be one step closer to their overall goal of finishing the course and therefore graduating and finishing school. I worked with a boy named "Jesse" one day who would not read any of the pieces and would simply skip to the questions. He would answer wrong because he lacked the information from the piece and his grade showed this lack of understanding accordingly. As the semester continued, the number of boys dropped even lower while the girls continued to attend. At the end, only one boy remained in the class full of girls. The PLC students correctly showed Michael Smith's point regarding both boys approach to reading and learning and their drive to complete seemingly useless tasks. The boys who dropped out or simply stopped working did not see the underlying purpose to learning poetry or reading Romeo and Juliet and it was therefore more difficult for them to stay on task and struggle through the assignments.