Girls like fiction, boys like fact
A couple of Saturdays ago, I attended a Literacy Forum sponsored by the Reading Association of the Philippines at the National Library. The two guest speakers were board members of the International Reading Association. Now, I am a self-declared reading advocate. When I used to teach in a school, I enjoyed coming up with various projects to encourage students and fellow teachers to read. I even spent my own money on most of them. So, research about reading habits of children or people in general interest me.
For this Literacy Forum, one thing really struck me, and that was the assertion from one of the reading experts that boys prefer reading nonfiction, and girls prefer fiction. And this supposedly explains a couple of things: why many boys are reluctant readers at school and why a lot of students have difficulty with higher level reading material.
How so? Well, majority of English or reading teachers are female. Now, since females prefer reading fiction, this preference colors the choice of reading material that students get in school, as well as the books that get chosen for the libraries. Therefore, most of the reading texts students are exposed to in English or Language Arts classes are fiction or creative writing, which aren't generally the interest of boys. Hence, if they're not into reading in the first place, then this doesn't encourage them much. Compound that with the small ratio of nonfiction books available in school libraries, then you get more male reluctant readers. Also, since more of the reading texts are fictional narratives, yet a lot of the reading we have to do as we move up the academic ladder is non-fiction, then that would account for a lack of preparedness for the reading materials at higher levels.
Unfortunately, I don't have access to the actual studies, but I did come across this article from Reading Rockets, which states the usual conclusion when it comes to studies of reading and gender. However, I thought this assertion I heard from the Literacy Forum more interesting and, if true, easier to find solutions for when it comes to reading education. So, I'm doing my own inquiry. No, this won't count as an actual study or research, just an honest question posed to fellow book bloggers, voracious readers, or anyone who might come across this post--
Do you think males really prefer non-fiction and females prefer fiction? Is this distinction reflected in your reading habits and preferences?
Other questions also occur to me like: Is this a biological distinction, because what about the LGBT population? It's a fascinating conundrum and yes, I'm geeky that way.
Personally, I do prefer fiction. But then I always thought that that was just me. My mom read me story books, so I liked story books and consequently read a majority of fiction. I don't know if things would be different if my mom read to me from the newspaper.
On the other hand, I read a lot of story books to my son, because that's what my mom did for me. However, I notice that, if left on his own, he picks out the I Wonder Why science series for his leisure reading. In a bookstore, when I ask him what book he'd like to get, he veers toward the dinosaur or animal books. At a certain point, I felt sad that he didn't seem to be into stories. Yet, I see him read happily on his own--just not my kind of books.
If I went by my own experience, the assertion of male and female reading preference seems to be true. But my experience is limited, so I'd like to hear yours, o reader of this blog. What's your take on the matter?
Comments
Perhaps little boys were told to keep their heads out of the clouds and enough with fairy tales and stories (and to go outside and play and be violent and competitive, and all that drivel) , and girls could do it because well, girls were girls so to speak. So it's quite arbitrary—they say it's so so it is just so.
Though if you factor in who actually CREATES fiction or gets published, i think the gender divide will become more convoluted.
What those two speakers might have done better would be to treat what they were saying as a changeable thing, you'd think readers would know that not everything is set in stone and that many structures in life are well, basically stories we tell ourselves.
Although, to be fair to the speaker who gave that particular talk, I believe her agenda was to get reading teachers to realize that teaching the structure of nonfiction works was essential yet undervalued in reading education and that fiction books outnumber nonfiction roughly 9 to 1 in libraries that she did a survey in.
Maybe boys just couldn't find books that they could really related to? Recently, I've seen several discussions on how there are so many young adult books for girls but not a lot for boys. If a guy friend asks me for young adult recommendations, I'd have to pause and think because a lot of my favorites focus on female characters.
This proposition that boys don't really take to fiction is new to me and one I'd like to put to the test.
Thanks for his nugget, Honey!
@Chachic - yeah, teachers in exclusive boys schools are always on the lookout for books that appeal to boys. Then again, there's always a struggle to get them books that they might like, not books that we might want them to read.
@Jo - My pleasure, Jo!
I used to work at a big bookstore and they did a study. The layout was such that upon entering the main doors, the business section was to the right and the fiction section to the left. The guards on duty noticed that 9 times out of 10, when a couple would enter the store, the woman would immediately go to the left and the man to the right.
According to the men I've asked, it seems they appreciate a book more when they know it's based on a person's real life experiences. Mind you, these are the same men who love watching movies based on totally unrealistic stories like action and sci-fi adventure. My female friends, and myself, on the other hand, love exploring the book fiction world, but tend to find these highly unrealistic movies somewhat annoying and pointless.
@Aldrin - Yup, have some guy friends who prefer fiction over nonfiction, too. Though, those are actually the readers. I'm wondering if reluctant male readers would get more encouraged if they started out with nonfic first.
This is actually a real hot-button issue for me. I am an adult male who was a good reader at a young age, but never really read all the short young adult novels that I remember other "good readers" reading in elementary school. In 8th grade, I remember a reading teacher being concerned that I was "only" reading The Lord of the Rings, C.S. Lewis (fiction) and modern poetry. So I humored her and read To Kill a Mockingbird, which I liked just fine. Only a little while later I was reading more heavily in poetry, as well as reading various non-fiction books, particularly related to psychology and religion.
I do think there is a weird privileging of fiction over non-fiction. Just recently I had someone treat my overwhelming preference for reading non-fiction as some sort of psychological conundrum, perhaps a sign of a troubled childhood. I'm not sure why I should be put on the defensive for finding more satisfaction in reading in order to understand, rather than reading for literary or entertainment value.
Sometimes people seem to claim that reading fiction makes one a better, wiser person, but I don't see a lot of evidence for this, anecdotally anyway. I know and have known a lot of people steeped in fiction (literary fiction, specifically) who have nonetheless been pretty naive and uninformed about, for example, politics and economics. Frankly, I wish more people would read in order to inform themselves about the real world.
I also think that trying to understand everything through the filter of stories which generally focus on interpersonal relationships is a handicap. Fiction doesn't do particularly well at dealing with larger systems, in my opinion.