Here’s what Flanagan tells us about the lure reading holds for girls:

The salient fact of an adolescent girl’s existence is her need for a secret emotional life-one that she slips into during her sulks and silences, during her endless hours alone in her room, or even just when she’s gazing out the classroom window while all of Modern European History, or the niceties of the passé composé, sluice past her. This means that she is a creature designed for reading in a way no boy or man, or even grown woman, could ever be so exactly designed, because she is a creature whose most elemental psychological needs-to be undisturbed while she works out the big questions of her life, to be hidden from view while still in plain sight, to enter profoundly into the emotional lives of others-are met precisely by the act of reading.

Insidehighered does a great job here doing exactly that. Studying abroad, it turns out, has become a female thing to do. What’s most interesting is the puzzlement expressed by college officials. The conventional wisdom explanations — that men are more likely to take on math and science majors that make studying abroad a challenge — don’t hold up.

So what’s the answer? Not clear, but the impact is: At a time when the economy continues to turn in a global direction, guys are losing out on an important educational experience. From the article:

 In recent years, as study abroad has ballooned across the nation, fueled by growth in short-term programs and increasing diversity in participating students’ majors and destinations, a 2-to-1 female-to-male ratio has stayed remarkably stagnant. In 2006-7, the most recent year for which data are available, 65.1 percent of Americans studying abroad were women, and 34.9 percent men. A decade earlier - when the total number of study abroad students was less than half its current total - the breakdown was 64.9 percent female, 35.1 percent male, according to Institute of International Education Open Doors statistics.

“I wouldn’t put it up there among the top issues or problems in the field, but I think it’s a puzzlement, to use an old term, and it’s sort of a persistent consideration, a persistent sort of annoying feeling that there’s something not right about it,” said William Hoffa, an independent practitioner in study abroad, retired from Amherst College, who wrote a history of study abroad and is now editing a second volume.

“Initially the problem was perceived to be curricular, meaning the curriculum of study abroad was likely to be in the humanities, social sciences, with a strong language dimension. To the degree that women were more likely to study in those areas, and the curriculum of study abroad was in those areas, it meant men that were studying more in science and business and technologies didn’t have the curriculum overseas,” said Hoffa. He continued, however, that while there’s likely still a bias toward the humanities and social sciences in study abroad, “The curriculum of study abroad is actually pretty much across the spectrum these days.”

The conclusion from the Marcus column:

Summers was boneheaded to say what he said, in the way that he said it and considering the job that he held. But he probably had a legitimate point — and the continuing uproar says more about the triumph of political correctness than about Summers’s supposed sexism.

Interesting observation by the science teacher overseeing the project:

“It’s no secret that males, especially socioeconomically disadvantaged males, are at the bottom of the ladder,” Ouellette said. “The girls aren’t. We’ve pounded it into the girls that they are smart about science and math, but what did we do in the process? We ignored the males. This is a way to improve the situation.”

Here’s more from the article:

Who’s better at science? Heritage High clubs also teach responsibility and leadership
The boys of MOB and the girls of STARS seek to learn and make friends by making the subject fun.
By CATHY GRIMES

December 1, 2008

NEWPORT NEWS

It’s a battle of the sexes as two Heritage High School clubs in Newport News compete with their own and NASA challenge experiments.

- The Men of Brilliance gathered on a recent Wednesday to tackle their latest challenge: coming up with plant habitats for a NASA lunar expedition.

The young men crowded around desks, wielding glue guns and threading rubber tubing through plastic bins, checking calculations and plans as they worked.

“It doesn’t have to look pretty. It just has to work,” instructed science teacher Don Ouellette, the group’s adviser.

Two halls away, the Scientifically Talented Ambitious Revolutionary Sisterhood also worked on NASA plant habitats, peering closely at clear round spheres holding small sprouts kept moist with water run from intravenous bags hanging overhead.

The two Heritage High School science clubs are in head-to-head competition with their NASA challenge experiments. They’re also trying to outdo each other with entries for a coming science fair.

Members of the fledgling girls-only STARS predict that they’ll mop up.

The message back from Men of Brilliance: Bring it on.

Four years ago, neither club existed. Men of Brilliance - MOB - was created first, born of concern for male students who were falling behind in their math and science classes, Ouellette said.

“The goal was to take a mix of kids we thought could benefit from a science club,” he said.

At the time, Ouellette was a second-year teacher who turned to education after a career in the Coast Guard. He and administrators wanted to focus on leadership, as well as science, in the boys-only club.

“We looked at the school programs and realized we didn’t have a lot of minority males participating in them,” Heritage administrator Dewey Ray say.

 Skyrocketing unemployment has city high school dropouts scrambling to get diplomas - only to find massive waiting lists for classes and cuts to vital literacy programs.

About 28% of city residents who are 25 years and older don’t have high school diplomas, Census data show, and they are among the most vulnerable victims of the economic meltdown.

“We’re all collectively holding our breath, hoping that we can make it through the fiscal year,” said Elyse Barbell, executive director of the Literacy Assistance Center.

Literacy Partners, which serves 2,000 students annually, is expecting its usual half-million dollars in foundation money to drop by half.

The group lost a third of its endowment in the stock market crash. It has closed three of its centers, which serve mostly students who are reading at about a fifth-grade level.

Sarah McCarthy-Fry said girls could be put off by boys in the classroom and separating them for lessons could be the answer.
In her first interview since replacing Lord Adonis in the Prime Minister’s recent reshuffle, she said: “Girls do much better in science in single-sex classes. They sometimes feel intimidated in mixed-sex classes with the boys hogging the limelight and putting their hands up to answer all the questions.”
Her call comes just a week after Vicky Tuck, the president of the Girls’ School Association and principal of Cheltenham Ladies’ College, predicted a return to separate-sex schooling after four decades of numbers dwindling from 2,500 single-sex secondary schools in the 1960s to just 400 today.
Mrs Tuck said more people were aware girls learnt differently from boys due to “neurological differences” in the developments of their brains.
Mrs McCarthy-Fry added that she believed both science and engineering could be presented to girls as an option in a more “girl-friendly” manner.
“If you talk to girls about what they want to do, many say they want to go into caring professions - like nursing,” she told the Independent. “But you could present science and engineering in a way girls could relate better to in careers advice.

And now this Nov. 14 announcement from The Brighter Choice Foundation in Albany, N.Y.:

The Albany City School District held a public hearing last night on the pending charter application to establish the Albany Leadership Charter High School for Girls, the first public girls-only high school, slated to open in August 2010. The school will initially serve a total of 125 students in the 9th and 10th grades, and expand to 9-12.

 Six people testified at the hearing, with five testifying in favor (including several parents) and one person opposed. The sole opponent, an older gentleman, railed incoherently about out-of-state forces setting up charters in New York.

Hawaiian inmates reading to their kids
Dads at Eloy prison recording books on CDs that are sent home for families to enjoy
by Lindsey Gemme - Nov. 25, 2008 12:00 AM
Casa Grande Dispatch
CASA GRANDE - It’s never too late to try being the best parent one can be, even from a prison cell an ocean from home.

More than 100 Hawaiian prisoners housed in Eloy are learning to do just that, through books, thanks to a program of the Hawaii-based Read-to-Me International organization.

For Garret Borges, his incarceration at the strictly Hawaiian Corrections Corp. of America prison Saguaro Correctional Facility in Eloy has been hard on him and his family.
His daughters, one 6 and 4-year-old twins, haven’t seen their father in the flesh in almost four years. Letters can only do so much, and a 20-minute phone call to Hawaii costs about $5.

But Borges and about 130 other Hawaiian prisoners with children have a new way to keep a relationship with their kids despite being apart, by reading books.

Thanks to a $1.25 million Promoting Responsible Fatherhood federal grant from the Department of Health and Human Services, Saguaro has been able to give incarcerated parents a program called Fathers Bridging the Miles, part of the Read-to-Me International organization.

It has given hundreds of Hawaiian inmates a chance to choose two books a month to send to each of their children ages 2 to 10 years. Inmates use a digital recorder so their children can pop in the CD and read along with their physically absent father.

Last year, for the first time ever, women earned more doctorates than men in every racial and ethnic group, according to a new National Science Foundation paper offering selected findings from the federal government’s annual Survey of Earned Doctorates.

In the chart, it’s worth noting the differences between science/engineering doctorates and the rest. Women are making progress in taking on more science doctorates, but is it enough to meet the needs of the economy? (Also, note the non-U.S. citizen figures in the science/engineering category.)

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Perhaps when children grow up and get out of the pre-K-12 world they adapt to the ambient literacy demands of a cultural niche that they find possible to occupy. They find jobs they can qualify for, they get information from sources they have access to and feel comfortable in using, and as they slip ever more firmly into their literacy niche, they feel more and more satisfaction with their literacy skills. Maybe this is why so many U.S. adults think they read Well or Very Well, despite their poor performance on literacy tests. This raises the possibility that if they are using themselves as a standard, many adults are not able to judge whether or not their children are learning to read Well or Very Well in school and fail to take action on behalf of failing children.

Today, our nation’s Adult Education and Literacy System remains marginalized, operating with an average of $820 per enrollee, including both federal and state funds. This is less than 10 percent of what we spend per child in the K-12 system. Strangely, though federal and state governments have provided tens of billions of dollars in mostly failed attempts to improve the reading skills of children, once the children grow up their reading problems seem to go away. I wonder why?

The book is a great resource for any parent determined to prevent their sons from slipping behind in literacy skills. Its greatest value, however, may be to teachers. Brozo delivers his advice in lesson-plan style, recommending specific books accompanied by specific exercises. The authors also perform a public service by sorting through the hype about what we know, and don’t know, about different learning styles for boys and girls and how that translates into teaching reading to boys.

Speaking of the IRA, here’s their message to the new administration, summing up why reading is a basic right. They’re right.