Boys Don’t Read — and that is a Big Problem

“If you can read this, thank a teacher.”
- Anonymous Teacher

“There are worse crimes than burning books.  One of them is not reading them.”
- Joseph Brodsky

“The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can’t read.”
Mark Twain

“The more you read, the more things you will know.  The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.”
-Dr. Seuss, “I Can Read with My Eyes Shut”

“The overall picture of literacy in America is bleak—a decades-long achievement plateau that leaves most young adults unprepared for higher-level work.”
Dana Goldstein, How to Make American Teens Smarter (from The Daily Beast)

————-

We’ve got a problem.  Boys don’t read.  And that is a big, big problem.

Here are some excerpts from the latest by Nicholas D. Kristof from the New York Times: The Boys Have Fallen Behind:

In the United States and other Western countries alike, it is mostly boys who are faltering in school. The latest surveys show that American girls on average have roughly achieved parity with boys in math. Meanwhile, girls are well ahead of boys in verbal skills, and they just seem to try harder.

The basic problem is an increased emphasis on verbal skills, often taught in sedate ways that bore boys. “The world has gotten more verbal,” he writes. “Boys haven’t.”

Some educators say that one remedy may be to encourage lowbrow, adventure or even gross-out books that disproportionately appeal to boys. (I confess that I was a huge fan of the Hardy Boys, and then used them to entice my own kids into becoming avid readers as well.)

Indeed, the more books make parents flinch, the more they seem to suck boys in. A Web site, guysread.com, offers useful lists of books to coax boys into reading, and they are helpfully sorted into categories like “ghosts,” “boxers, wrestlers, ultimate fighters,” and “at least one explosion.”

At a time when men are still hugely overrepresented in Congress, on executive boards, and in the corridors of power, does it matter that boys are struggling in schools? Of course it does: our future depends on making the best use of human capital we can, whether it belongs to girls or boys. If that means nurturing boys with explosions, that’s a price worth paying.

This is a blog primarily about ideas found in business books.  We sometimes journey a bit away from that, but we always come back to it.  And because this is a blog about ideas found in business books, then there is a pretty significant prerequisite for the writers on our blogging team and the readers of this blog.  We all have to be able to read.  And then, because we can read, we actually do read.  Let me quote Mark Twain again: “The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can’t read.”

This was my favorite -- and I read them all

I don’t know how to solve this problem.  (The girls seem to be doing better at the moment). But I know my own story.  I started with comic books, then I went to the Hardy Boys, and then to Nero Wolfe, and then to J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S Lewis, and then ultimately I read Susan Scott and Jim Collins and David Halberstam and Peter Drucker and Twyla Tharpe and Neil Postman and…  Learning to read was the prerequisite to the discipline of reading.  I know no other path.

Kristof mentioned the site guysread.com.  Yes, right there on the home page, it has a category of books with “at least one explosion.”  Such books may not be as much fun to read as playing a video game with hundreds of explosions, but it has far greater long-term benefits.

Boys don’t read.  I hope we can all figure out some ways to help them do so.

Never Aim for the Middle — Wisdom from James Surowiecki

News item: Apple Sells Out iPad Pre-Order Inventory As Launch Nears.

———–

James Surowiecki is the author of the influential book, The Wisdom Of Crowds (one of the books I have presented at the First Friday Book Synopsis), and a regular columnist for The New Yorker.  He is an astute observer of the trends and changes in our culture.  Here’s his latest.

In a big-picture scheme of things, we have two groups that are healthy, and one that is in real trouble.  The two healthy groups are the “very best,” and the “good enough.” It is the “middle” that is in real danger.  This is the premise behind his article SOFT IN THE MIDDLE. Here’s part of his opening paragraph:

Starting at five hundred dollars, the iPad is significantly more expensive than its competitors. But Apple’s assumption is that, if the iPad is also significantly better, people will happily shell out for it (as they already do for iPods, iPhones, and Macs). That’s why when Steve Jobs first introduced the iPad he said that, if a product wasn’t “far better” than what was already out there, it had “no reason for being.

At the other end of the spectrum is the “good enough — adequate.”  Here’s a paragraph about this group:

On the contrary, companies like Ikea, H. & M., and the makers of the Flip video camera are flourishing not by selling products or services that are “far better” than anyone else’s but by selling things that aren’t bad and cost a lot less. These products are much better than the cheap stuff you used to buy at Woolworth, and they tend to be appealingly styled, but, unlike Apple, the companies aren’t trying to build the best mousetrap out there. Instead, they’re engaged in what Wired recently christened the “good-enough revolution.” For them, the key to success isn’t excellence. It’s well-priced adequacy.

And though these two examples are about different ends of the consumer world, they have something in common:

These two strategies may look completely different, but they have one crucial thing in common: they don’t target the amorphous blob of consumers who make up the middle of the market.

Surowiecki concludes with this:

According to one estimate, Nokia has nearly twenty times Apple’s market share, but the iPhone alone makes almost as much money as all Nokia’s phones combined. But making money by selling moderately good products that are moderately expensive isn’t going to get any easier, which suggests a slight rewrite of the old Highland ballad. You take the high road, and I’ll take the low road, and we’ll both be in Scotland afore the guy in the middle.

Here’s my take.  A while back, I read (and presented) the Robert Bloom book, The Inside Advantage.  In it, he spoke of the importance of these two questions

• Who is my core customer?
• What is my uncommon offering?

From the Surowiecki article, we learn that it may be much easier to answer these questions for the upper and the lower end of markets, and a whole lot harder to target the “amorphous middle.”

Book Review: The Lords of Strategy

The Lords of Strategy: The Secret Intellectual History of the New Corporate World
Walter Kiechel III
Harvard Business Press (2010)

Kiechel suggests that understanding what he calls the “strategy revolution” requires getting beyond three common beliefs: “The first is that at bottom, ideas don’t really matter much in business.” In fact, ideas that are sharp with a purpose to answer questions, solve problems, and facing challenges are essential. Another common belief to be overcome is that strategy has no intellectual history. In fact, “smart companies throughout history have had a sense of how they wanted to make money…What companies didn’t have before the strategy revolution was a way of systematically putting together all the elements that determined their corporate fate, in particular, the three Cs central to any good strategy: the company’s costs, especially costs relative to other companies; the definition of the markets the company served – its customers, in other words – and its position vis a vis competitors.” The third common belief to be overcome is that consultants are at best “hangers-on of only occasional, limited usefulness” or at worst “rapacious parasites whose slightest presence in the corporate body indicates gullibility, weakness, and insecurity on the par of its leadership.”

The “lords” to which the book’s title refers include Henderson, of course, as well as Bill Bain, Fred Gluck, and Michael Porter. Kiechel devotes a separate chapter to each and frequently refers to all of them throughout his lively narrative. Moreover, he also discusses the significance of several others who – to varying degree – also participated in the “invention” of corporate strategy. “This is a story not if paradigm shift, but of the bit-by-bit creation of the first comprehensive paradigm that pulled together all of the elements most vital for a company to take into account if it is to compete, win, and survive.” Given the number if different executives and academics involved in the process of introducing a new business discipline, should come as no surprise that that there have been – since 1963 when Henderson and his BCG associates launched the revolution – numerous and significant complications (and sometimes spirited disagreements) as to what organizational strategy is and isn’t, what it should and shouldn’t be expected to accomplish, how to measure its impact, and when to revise or replace it.

As Kiechel explains, “Implementation was not the only problem dogging the strategy revolution as it tried to consolidate its gains. The tools had to be continually sharpened, if not discarded altogether for something else, as began to become apparent in the 1970s and by the 1980s was glaringly obvious. The experience curve in particular needed reexamination. To their surprise, consultants were also discovering that there appeared to be industries for which low cost was no guarantee of competitive advantage. Enter the possibilities for ‘differentiation’.” (Page 185) Over time, academics and executives as well as consultants gave it intellectual structure, inclusive processes, systematic execution, reliable analytics and most important of all, clarity of purpose. The revolution continues to evolve.

A Book That Packs Surprises in Several Ways

The United States has long moved away from being a manufacturing-oriented society toward one that is knowledge-based and service-oriented.   Most of the manufacturing work that employees performed with their hands has now been replaced by machines and technology.

In the book that I will present on Friday, April 2 at the First Friday Book Synopsis in Dallas, author Matthew B. Crawford provides a unique perspective on the value of doing work the old-fashioned way:  with your hands.

The book, Shop Class as Soulcraft:  An Inquiry into the Value of Work, published by Penguin Press, is quite a surprise coming from this author’s background.  He holds a Ph.D. in political philosphy from the University of Chicago.  His greatest interest, however, is running his independent motorcycle shop, Shockoe Moto, in Richmond, Virginia.  You will have to admit that is quite an interesting combination.

Even more surprising is where you find this book.  Despite its title that includes “work,” you will not locate it in the business section of the bookstore.  I found it in the philosophy section.  That is consistent with the author’s background, but not with the subject matter.  Make no mistake about it – this is a business book.

You will find yourself questioning the worth of turning everyone into a “knowledge worker,” which he claims comes from a misguided separation of thinking from doing, and from working with the hands from the mind.

Perhaps from a throwback perspective, you will find this refreshing.

Look for the summary soon at 15MinuteBusinessBooks.com.

Loss of a Legend Author

This blog obviously focuses on business books, but if you read business books, then you may also like to read other types as well.  If you venture out to read novels, you likely have enountered one of more than 45 books penned by Robert D. Parker.

He was one of my favorite authors, and I was saddened to read of his passing on January 18, 2010 at his home in Cambridge, Massachsetts.  He was 77.

Parker’s primary publisher was Penguin Group – (USA)’s G. P. Putnam’s Sons and Berkley Books imprints.  I will miss reading his books and keeping up with his characters. 

The following is his biography, which I found at:

http://www.bookreporter.com/authors/au-parker-robert.asp

Long acknowledged as the dean of American crime fiction, Mr. Parker was named Grand Master of the Edgar Awards in 2002 by the Mystery Writers of America, an honor shared with earlier masters such as Alfred Hitchcock and Ellery Queen. He was renowned for his Spenser novels, featuring the wise-cracking, street-smart Boston private-eye, which earned him a devoted following and reams of critical acclaim. The New York Times Book Review said of the Spenser books: “We are witnessing one of the great series in the history of the American detective story.” Mr. Parker began writing his Spenser novels in 1971 while teaching at Boston’s Northeastern University. Little did he suspect then that his witty, literate prose and psychological insights would make him the keeper of the flame of America’s rich tradition of detective fiction. Mr. Parker also launched two other bestselling series featuring, respectively, Massachusetts police chief Jesse Stone and Boston private detective Sunny Randall. In addition, Mr. Parker authored four national bestselling Westerns and successfully crossed over to the young adult market, writing several bestsellers for Philomel, a Penguin Young Readers Group imprint.

Helen Brann, Mr. Parker’s literary agent of 37 years, said, “Bob wrote five pages a day every day but Sunday (and some holidays or vacations with his wife Joan) every day of his adult life. He was very clear about it. No more and no less than five pages. Bob was ‘one of the ones’ in my life, a friend whose kindness, wit, loyalty and sense of honor, all of which were reflected in his work, I have counted on on a daily basis all these years. I shall miss him deeply.”

Mr. Parker published more than 60 books worldwide during this career and has been translated in 24 countries. His latest, SPLIT IMAGE, a Jesse Stone novel, is being published by Putnam next month. The Boston Globe has called Mr. Parker “a force of nature.”

Mr. Parker’s Spenser books were the basis for the popular television series, “Spenser: For Hire”, starring Robert Urich, which ran for four years on ABC-TV, with the Arts & Entertainment Network producing three Spenser television movies starring Joe Mantegna. The Jesse Stone series inspired seven made-for-television movies starring Tom Selleck, the latest to be aired by CBS-TV this spring. Mr. Selleck said, “It has been my privilege to have known Robert B. Parker, not only as a fine writer, but also as a collaborator, an inspiration and a friend. Together we have made seven Jesse Stone films for CBS — based upon the character created by Bob and embraced by audiences the world over. Bob was an enthusiastic supporter of our films. To them, he contributed his spirit and his passion, as well as his wise and generous counsel. He was my friend and I shall greatly miss him.”

Mr. Parker’s bestselling Western novel, APPALOOSA, was made into a major motion picture by New Line, starred Ed Harris and Viggo Mortensen, and was a box office hit in 2008. Ed Harris commented, “It’s a sad day. Not only has the world lost one of its most prolific and entertaining authors, but on a personal level I lost a good friend, a man who afforded me one of the most rewarding experiences of my life, the filming of Appaloosa. He was incredibly generous and supportive and I will miss him dearly. My sympathy goes out to Joan and his sons.”

Mr. Parker was born on September 17, 1932 in Springfield, Massachusetts. He graduated from Boston University, where he received his Masters and PhD. He was married to his wife Joan H. Parker for 53 years. They attended Colby College together, and they were married in 1956, after Mr. Parker completed his Army service in Korea. They have two sons, David, a dancer/choreographer, and Daniel, an actor.

Mr. Parker dedicated every book he wrote to his wife and once said, “Joan has been the central factor in my life since I was a child. You wouldn’t understand me unless you understand me and her.” He said of his character, Spenser: “What makes him interesting is the struggle for his autonomy; for Spenser, it is continuing struggle. Part of the reason he has to struggle is that he has allowed himself to be in love and to care. The struggle between care and commitment and autonomy lends tension to the form.”

Mr. Parker’s longtime editor, Christine Pepe, Executive Editor, G. P. Putnam’s Sons, commented, “What mattered most to Bob were his family and his writing, and those were the only things that he needed to be happy. He will be deeply missed by all us at Putnam, and by his fans everywhere.”