Besides the rise in leftist politics in the classroom and the learning loss caused by the Covid lockdowns, one major issue K-12 teachers have observed in recent years is the widening learning gap between boys and girls. Girls earn higher grades than boys and and do better on standardized tests like the SAT and ACT, all of which results in them significantly outnumbering boys in college enrollment. Already, this educational disparity between the sexes is leading to a crisis in marriage and family formation, to say nothing of political polarization, since most men and women struggle to find intellectual equals who can understand and complement them.
Last month, Tom Sarrouf addressed this issue in an essay for the Institute for Family Studies. After laying out the problem of boys falling behind, he centers on the fundamental activity that accounts for this: reading. In short, boys read far less than girls, and this inevitably hinders their intellectual growth and maturity.
Sarrouf argues that this could be remedied with assigned reading that is more boy-oriented: “I propose a rebalancing of reading material in schools specifically targeted at boys.” In practice, this would include more nonfiction, particularly in history and science classes, and fewer texts with female protagonists and less fiction in general.
Russian-American writer Katya Sedgwick counters Sarrouf’s insistence on teaching more nonfiction by noting that this is already written into many courses’ curriculum and arguing that boys would actually profit from reading more fiction, not less. She agrees that male protagonists
