why are some high school boys not interested in studying literature?

Question

I have to find out!I mean, I need the answers badly. I have a research and it's due soon. Hope someone can answer my question or help me out or maybe recommend a site or a book or an author who can support this research or something!!

Thanks in advance!! :)

Answer 1

What a good question! And what good answers you’re getting, all of them serious and all of them right. That’s very nearly a first for Yahoo! Answers.

But, first, lets get two things straight: (1) Some high-school girls are not interested in studying literature. (2) Some high-school boys ARE interested in studying literature. In some schools, they have to keep quiet about their interest. Boys who want to play the part of Romeo or who like the poetry of Walt Whitman can easily get labeled “fag” or “queer.” Ain’t fair and ain’t true, and doesn’t matter. But that’s just the way it is in the hallways of some high schools.

With that in mind, I think you can put the many answers to your question under three main headings:

(1) With all their competing interests, high school kids just don’t have much time for literature. After all, there’s sports and cars and hormones, pop music and computer games and hormones, NASCAR and after-school jobs and hormones. That doesn’t leave a lot of time to read Great Expectations or Don Quixote or War and Peace. Or even Catcher in the Rye, maybe. And if there’s not been that much time for reading, then there sure isn’t likely to be much time for or interest in STUDYING literature!

(2) People, of all ages, from childhood to old age, were just born to have different interests. Some folks just aren’t much interested in opera or symphonies, or ballet; some folks are much interested in gardening or auto mechanics or kayaking or spelunking; some folks aren’t much interested in chess or the Olympics or football (omigod, did I just say football?). Unlike all those other interests, school requires that high school boys (and girls) study literature, usually for all four years. Just think what the reaction would be if that were opera or spelunking or chess!

Some high-school boys are not interested in physics or calculus or European history or anthropology or even a foreign language. The only difference is that, in most high schools, only people who are interested or motivated by their career goals enroll in chemistry and calculus and French. But everybody is expected to study Macbeth or The Scarlet Letter or Emily Dickinson. So it shouldn’t be surprising that there’s some resistance, maybe even resentment, maybe outright rebellion. Certainly there will be those who substitute Cliff Notes or Yahoo! Answers for actually analyzing the works and studying them carefully.

(3) High-school English teachers don’t plan their courses to meet the needs and interests of high-school boys (or girls). Now, it pains me to admit this, for I’ve been an English teacher for many years. But it’s the truth. English is a required subject because reading and writing are critical for success in higher education and in all professions and many vocations. But that’s reading and writing about ideas and issues and experiences. Not reading Hamlet and writing about his Oedipus complex.

From childhood on, I was an avid reader. But in high school, I hated English. If anyone had told me I was gonna be an English teacher I would have laughed them out of the room—or gagged. Oh, I liked reading Ivanhoe and Tale of Two Cities OK, but I hated spending several weeks talking about what the book was about, remembering little details for a unit exam, answering all those questions in the study guide, identifying symbols and genres and historic eras. I hated memorizing poetry and writing book reports and learning a lot of titles and authors. I just wanted you to leave me alone and let me read Les Miserables and Quo Vadis and Huckleberry Finn (for the fourth or fifth time) on my own.

If high-school English teachers want to reach those high-school boys (and girls) who are reluctant readers and students, here are some of the things they need to do: (a) Learn to do critical reading on current issues in the news—issues important to high-school students, interesting to high school students, and important to their future and the future of the world we live in, like war and peace, careers in the military, causes of personal depression and economic Depression, immigration past and future, election reforms, SUVs and global warming, No Child Left Behind, SAT testing, and What is fundamentalism? (Islamic and Christian). Well, that last one might get a teacher fired. But those are the kinds of issues every high-school graduate should be able to read and write about on a sophisticated level, and almost none can.

(b) Let students develop personal reading habits by setting up individualized reading programs, where students choose their own books, choose how to communicate about those books with one another, join in book discussion groups, and make out reading lists for next year’s students to consider. There is a lot of worthwhile reading out there from Orson Scott Card to Margaret Atwood to Salman Rushdie to Isabella Allende, from biography to travel to real adventure to religion to humor/satire to modern, readable poetry (yep, even poetry!) that kids will like to read. If the goal of high-school English is to develop lifetime readers, you have to let kids spend time reading books that they want to read and exploring and expanding their interests.

( c) And, yes, explore landmarks of literature. But not as literary scholars and critics. Not yet. Or only in elective courses on the level of calculus and French IV. For most students reading the Odyssey or Antigone or Gulliver’s Travels, explore together questions like these: How does this work relate to your experience? to the 21st century? What do you understand and why, and what do you not understand and why? How did this work get to be considered a literary landmark? If you were gonna make a film of this work, how would you do it? If you were gonna write a modern work based on one of these characters or conflicts, how might you go about it? If you were asked to consult with a publisher about illustrations for this work, what would you recommend? In other words, NOT what does this work mean to the literary critics in universities, but what does it mean to you? How does it relate to our experience and the world we live in.

Let high-school boys read about important issues (especially issues important to them); let them choose works they will read for personal satisfaction and how they will communicate about them; and let them look at literary landmarks from their own point of view.

I promise you there will be more high-school boys interested in reading, maybe even in studying literature. Oh, not all by any means. After all there is still football and after-school jobs and raging hormones. But more than there are now—more than are interested in opera or auto mechanics. I’d take bets on that.

Then there’s always The Outsiders and Catcher in the Rye and Friday Nights (about a high-school football team in Texas). These are all considered landmarks in literature, too. Or should be.

Answer 2

Are you serious? Well at that age we are nothing more than a ball of raging hormones. Ironic that women get that way later in life. That's Mother Nature's little joke on us I suppose. It's hard to want to study anything besides the girl sitting next to you in study hall. It's all brain chemistry. All though if we didn't feel this way none of us would be here. So it's really a double edged sword.

I'm not sure if this helped or not, but there's my 2 cents.

Answer 3

Peer pressure, society's pressure--"Boys aren't supposed to be into that sort of stuff like poetry and literature. It's not manly. Boys should play sports, work a job, and get girls, blah blah blah..." There are news articles that I've read that talk about girls learn differently than boys and that educators are now pushing to have girls only and boys only schools. I think one such article may have been in the March or April issue of O magazine. I hope you find what you need for your research. Hop to it, kid!

Answer 4

Good question. In my opinion it is the way they are brought up, reared,etc. Watching TV all they see are sports figures who have excelled at some sport, but didn't have to know anything else and they want to be just like them. What most of them gloss over in their musings is that most, if not all of these athletes attended college and if something happened to them, because of their fallback, they have something they can do other than sports. Literature is a boring item that young boys and men don't want to have anything to do with because they cannot relate to the fact that it not only teaches them to speak properly, but it improves their minds as well. Just my opinion.

Answer 5

Most "literature" in High School is not geared to the interest of teenage boys. For example, what is the last classic piece of lit you read about cars, girls, baseball, or rap?

As far as girls go--well, you didn't ask about them.

Answer 6

Its not there not interested in Lit, it what's your giving them to read. Guys are not interested in Love storied or classics(most). You have to get there attention. with a book that is fast paced, full of action, guns and bloods.

Stephen Kind, I think it they made kids read more on him guys would be more interested in reading.

Anne Rice, Vampires, Blood, etc.

Tanya Huffm WereWolves, blood, and guts, stuff.

Or give them books based on sports, since most guys are into sports, a book about football or soccer, would catch there attention.

Answer 7

Let them read 'The Catcher In the Rye' by J.D. Salinger. That might change their mind about books.

Answer 8

Raging hormones!

Answer 9

They're too busy seeding instead of reading.

Answer 10

'Cause media tells them to be concern only with their Ipod, MySpace and some shallow stuff.

Answer 11

ADHD. Too much stuff going on!