Wall Street Journal: How to Raise Boys Who Read

Here is an interesting article in the Wall Street Journal called "How to Raise Boys who Read."
(http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704271804575405511702112290.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTThirdBucket)

Here are some points I want to make out....

1. In America today, men are not being men... Period. The American family is broken down and the concept of Biblical manhood is lost in our culture. Instead, boys are more into video games and other forms of entertainment instead of learning. The article states;

The appearance of the boy-girl literacy gap happens to coincide with the proliferation of video games and other electronic forms of entertainment over the last decade or two. Boys spend far more time "plugged in" than girls do. Could the reading gap have more to do with competition for boys' attention than with their supposed inability to focus on anything other than outhouse humor?

Dr. Robert Weis, a psychology professor at Denison University, confirmed this suspicion in a randomized controlled trial of the effect of video games on academic ability. Boys with video games at home, he found, spend more time playing them than reading, and their academic performance suffers substantially. Hard to believe, isn't it, but Science has spoken.



2. Those with strong families tend to not have this problem. The article states again;

offer a final piece of evidence that is perhaps unanswerable: There is no literacy gap between home-schooled boys and girls. How many of these families, do you suppose, have thrown grossology parties?


If parents get their act back together, we would not have many of the problems we are currently having today. America within the next couple of decades will lose its military strength, scientific edge, and freedom if the family is not restored. They need to get involved in raising their own children and not have the state do it for them(Through the public school system). Al Mohler writes;

Don’t reward with video games. Instead, take the games away. If parents do not restrict time spent with digital devices, boys will never learn to read and to love reading.


3. This is a step towards America losing its freedom. Abolition of the family is a goal towards a Communist society. Karl Marx writes;

Abolition [Aufhebung] of the family! Even the most radical flare up at this infamous proposal of the Communists.

On what foundation is the present family, the bourgeois family, based? On capital, on private gain. In its completely developed form, this family exists only among the bourgeoisie. But this state of things finds its complement in the practical absence of the family among the proletarians, and in public prostitution.

The bourgeois family will vanish as a matter of course when its complement vanishes, and both will vanish with the vanishing of capital.

Do you charge us with wanting to stop the exploitation of children by their parents? To this crime we plead guilty.

But, you say, we destroy the most hallowed of relations, when we replace home education by social.

And your education! Is not that also social, and determined by the social conditions under which you educate, by the intervention direct or indirect, of society, by means of schools, &c.? The Communists have not invented the intervention of society in education; they do but seek to alter the character of that intervention, and to rescue education from the influence of the ruling class.



As you can see, the family is a threat to an expanding government. It can provide for itself. The family according to scripture has rulers(mother/father) and subjects(children) that only a national government can imitate. Parents, if your son is addicted to video games or whatever, take it away. You'll be glad you made that choice.