THE TROUBLE WITH BOYS Now Available! "A riveting, deeply thoughtful and encouraging book that leads the way to embracing the best in our boys." —Louann Brizendine, author of the national bestseller THE FEMALE BRAIN Read more reviews here... ORDER THE BOOK from an independent bookstore via Booksense, Barnes & Noble, Borders, or Amazon Read a Q & A here... Read the story on MSNBC... I spent five years covering education blinded to an enormous and important story unfolding right in front of my face—the pervasive underachievement of boys in school. How did I miss it for so long? I'm a grateful beneficiary of the feminist movement and I came of age reading books like Carol Gilligan's In A Different Voice and Mary Pipher's Reviving Ophelia. I was focused on the struggles girls face in schools. But gradually, from talking to teachers, principals, headmasters, educational researchers and some of my sons' smart, underperforming guy friends, I began to sense that something had changed in our culture and our schools that was causing boys to fall behind. I began to comb through data—and what I found was not comforting. In 2006, I wrote a cover story for Newsweek called the "Boy Crisis," which talked about the way boys are falling behind and what some schools are doing about it. The response astonished me. The story was a one of Newsweek's top selling covers in recent years. The web traffic was enormous. Several hundred parents, mostly well educated, empowered mothers of sons, emailed to thank me for writing about the central drama of their family life—the mismatch between their sons and school. My book, The Trouble With Boys is an attempt to frame a discussion about education and gender in a new way. I am not interested in rehashing a debate about gender politics left over from 1978. We can no longer talk about gender and education like a seesaw—when girls are up, boys are down and visa versa. Yes, the struggle for equal rights for women continues—and there is much work to be done, particularly when it comes to equity issues in the workplace. Yes, there need to be more women in technology and computer fields and more women in corporate board rooms and in Congress. But we don't get there by ignoring the very real struggles of schoolboys. Right now, we have 2.5 million more college-going females than college-going males. The growing education gap between men and women is having, and will continue to have, massive implications for our children and our children's children. My book is an attempt to take a serious look at what is ailing our sons and what parents and educators must do. Crown Publishing Group, Hardcover, September 2008 ISBN: 0307381285 ISBN-13: 9780307381286   Reviews "Passionate, powerful and persuasive, Peg Tyre's beautifully researched book, THE TROUBLE WITH BOYS offers the reader a compelling explanationfor why boys are not being served wellby America's schools. I recommend this book to any mother who is confusedor worried byherson's struggles in the classroom. What you learn here will help you to guide your son's education. I suspect thatteachers may feel thatPeg Tyrehas given voice totheir deepest doubts about the things we make boys endure in school. I urge all educators to read THE TROUBLE WITH BOYS. You won't teach boys in the same way once you've finished it." —Michael Thompson, coauthor of the New York Times bestseller RAISING CAIN "In a spinoff from her 2006 cover story for Newsweek, "The Boy Crisis," Tyre delivers a cogent, reasoned overview of the current national debate about why boys are falling behind girls' achievement in school and not attending college in the same numbers. While the education emphasis in the 1990s was on helping girls succeed, especially in areas of math and science, boys are lagging behind, particularly in reading and writing; parents and educators, meanwhile, are scrambling to address the problems, from questioning teaching methods in preschool to rethinking single-sex schools. Tyre neatly sums up the information for palatable parental consumption: although boys tend to be active and noisy, and come to verbal skills later than girls, early-education teachers, mostly female, have little tolerance for the way boys express themselves. The accelerated curriculum and de-emphasis on recess do not render the classroom "boy friendly," and already set boys up for failure that grows more entrenched with each grade. Tyre touches on important concerns about the lack of male role models in many boys' lives, the perils of video-game obsession and the slippery dialogue over boys' brains versus girls' brains. Tyre treads carefully, offering a terrifically useful synthesis of information." —Publishers Weekly (6/30/2008) "This is a book with an important point to make, whether or not you have a son struggling in school. Tyre incisively explains how institutions and cultural mores, not parenting, are contributing to the growing alienation of boys from school. Hers is a welcome and much-needed report card." —Cleveland Plain Dealer (9/28/08) "Tyre's new book has ignited a new national conversation about a generation of boys we hope to raise to become productive, caring young men." —Tampa Tribune (9/28/08) "Boys have their troubles and THE TROUBLE WITH BOYS so sensitively reveals them. Parents, teachers and others of us who work with kids will do so more effectively having read this vital book. Boys everywhere will be the fortunate beneficiaries of Peg Tyre's insights and suggestions." —Mel Levine, M.D. author of the #1 New York Times bestseller A MIND AT A TIME "Every once in a while a book comes along that offers us an opportunity to change the way we look at something we thought we understood. THE TROUBLE WITH BOYS offers just such an opportunity. It combines meticulous documentation with eloquent first person accounts in a way that good teachers know is the best way to present challenging ideas responsibly and persuasively." —James Garbarino, PhD, author of LOST BOYS: WHY OUR SONS TURNS VIOLENT AND HOW WE CAN SAVE THEM "A riveting, deeply thoughtful and encouraging book that leads the way to embracing the best in our boys." —Louann Brizendine, author of the national bestseller THE FEMALE BRAIN and the forthcoming THE MALE BRAIN "A terrific book, solidly documented…Should be helpful to parents and teachers who need to understand why boys are falling behind and do something about it." —Diane Ravitch, Professor, New York University's Steinhardt School of Education, and author of LEFT BACK: A CENTURY OF BATTLES OVER SCHOOL REFORM "THE TROUBLE WITH BOYS is a rarity—a page-turner about teaching and learning. It does a brilliant job ofdemonstrating the mismatch between what many boys need and what education, from preschool through college, gives them. Peg Tyre is a wise and engaging guide on everything from what's going on in classrooms to the impact of video games and the findings of cutting-edge neuroscience. Her nuanced treatment of the plusses and minuses of single-sex education as well as her critique of faddish brain-based education are especially eye-opening. This is a book for all parents, whether they're raising girls or boys, as well as for everyone who cares about how we're educating our kids—which ought to be all of us." —David Kirp, Professor, Goldman School of Public Policy, UC-Berkeley "A new and insightful view of why boys are turning off from school and what parents and educators can do to bring them back…Brims with practical ideas as well as a sophisticated understanding of why boys have become the new underdogs from preschool through college." —Judith Kleinfeld, Professor of Psychology and Director, Boys Project, University of Alaska Fairbanks "A clear-eyed, wide ranging, deeply thoughtful book about what's going on with boys…and why we should care. This is the book about boys that could change our world." —Jon Scieszka, Library of Congress appointed "Ambassador for Children's Literature," and author of numerous bestsellers and award winners including "The Time Warp Trio" books, THE STINKEY CHEESE MAN and MATH CURSE   Longer Reviews from REDBOOK: Boys falling behind Girls rule in school. Great, right? Not to the millions of boys who are performing poorly in reading and writing, being diagnosed with learning disabilities in record numbers, and opting out of college. In THE TROUBLE WITH BOYS, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Peg Tyre, herself a mother of two sons, dug deep into the research about how boys learn and came to some eye-opening conclusions about why our schools may be failing them. What has changed to make boys struggle as early as preschool? Over the last 10 years, parents have bought into this idea that children are receptive to academic learning at a very young age. But there's good research that says that's really bad for a lot of boys, who aren't developmentally ready yet—their fine motor skills and vocabulary develop later than girls', and they have a harder time sitting still. We think if we give them French and violin lessons early, we can plant the seeds of genius. But it doesn't work that way. Why are girls succeeding while boys are more likely to struggle? Boys predominantly choose books that are funny and vulgar. They think The Adventures of Captain Underpants is the funniest thing on earth. They don't want to read Little House on the Prairie! But if they bring Captain Underpants or Captain Marvel to school, many teachers will tell them those aren't classroom books. So they learn that what they like to read isn't acceptable at school. That's a negative message that sets a lot of boys back. The same goes for writing. Boys tend to write for other boys—things that are dark, funny, and gory—whereas girls tend to write for the teacher. Boys don't want to write personal narratives; they want to write about Star Wars, and teachers might not approve of that, so we're creating nonreaders and nonwriters. What do you suggest to parents who see their sons falling into these traps? Talk with other mothers so you'll see that it's not just your kid. Find out what is developmentally appropriate for your son's age, and then check in with his teacher. Most are eager to make changes to help your child succeed. Some teachers keep blocks in the classroom through third grade, allow for greater leeway in reading and writing topics, and support risk-taking rather than compliance, which I think empowers a lot of children—many of them boys.