Ah youth, interminable pointless youth

I'm late on this, but the steady drumbeat of worry around boys who don't read growing up into men who vote for Stephen Harper or something like him, has Britain spooked and suggesting a "boys' bookshelf" packed with spy novels and action stories to encourage more boys to read, the education secretary said today."
The précis is that female teachers, while able, aren't getting the reading thing across to boys who often come from single parent families, thus they have no decent male role models. Boys are doubly worried about bullies teasing them for carting around books.
Oh, and too much TV.
I'm stealing a construct from TEV here. *
In early grade school, I was occasionally tapped to raid the school library and read aloud when time permitted. Anything baseball related worked for me and I was sickly sweet for a girl in class. She also regularly mopped up most of us guys on the baseball diamond, so I figured Bill Carol's Single to Center about a young boy whose sister was the superior ballplayer would fit the bill as a way in.
After getting into the book, my true loves hand shot up and she asked our teacher to pull rank.
It seems she played baseball all the time and wanted to hear about something, well anything else.
Thus, my acumen around women was cemented evermore.
*Marks story is actually a hell of a lot better.

Posted by Dave