EDUCATION

I’d be happy if he read the Sunday comics,” laments Jodi DiGiuseppe. A mother of two from London, Ont., DiGiuseppe has tried everything to get her nine-year-old son, Anthony, to read, with little success. “We banned the TV and offered bribes, but that didn’t work for long.” Like many boys his age, Anthony just isn’t interested in books. But get Anthony playing his favourite video game and he turns into a digital demon. “I have to drag him away from the screen.”

Having a button-mashing, book-bashing son is worrying for many parents. For the last six years, literacy tests have shown Canadian boys trailing girls in reading and writing skills. In 1998, for example, 15 percent of 13-year-old girls scored higher than boys on reading tests and, in more recent writing exams, girls continue to do better. Are video games and other digital distractions to blame? While many parents and teachers are quick to say yes, some educators are coming to the defence of video games. Boys aren’t becoming illiterate, they say. Boys are redefining literacy and gaining “digital literacy” skills. And in the workplaces of the future, these skills might just give them a head start on their book-reading buddies.

“Boys are becoming literate in spite of school instruction,” says Heather Blair, an associate professor in the department of elementary education at the University of Alberta. Blair and colleague Kathy Sanford, of the University of Victoria, spent three years talking to adolescent boys, delving into their backpacks and desks, hoping to learn more about boys and literacy. “Computer games, Internet searches and online chat rooms have shaped the way boys interact with texts,” says Blair. In chat rooms, boys communicate in a shorthand that reads like a rapid-fire barrage of customized licence plates. They scour websites, absorbing sports statistics and tracking down secret cheat codes for their favourite video games. Parents are often mystified by the skill and confidence boys show as they click their way through these technologies. This, say Blair and Sanford, is literacy in action. Their findings are attracting attention from educators and giving hope to frustrated parents.

Originally published in Today's Parent, September 2004