A provocative piece in the UK’s Telegraph includes this gem of wisdom:
“The feminisation of education and the ensuing triumph of political correctness have turned generations of boys off reading, not least by urging them to get in touch with their feelings and despise that part of themselves that wants to see heroes biffing villains.
“This trend was just beginning in the late 1960s, when, in Cambridge, I was teaching day-release apprentices. All of them had to be force-fed Lord of the Flies in the hope that they would become ashamed of their baser male instincts.
“This was the moment when boys began to associate reading with being preached at. They were discouraged from reading about anachronistic boarding schools, or Nelson beating the French, or sword fights, or shooting down enemy planes, or William, Ginger, Henry and Douglas beating up Hubert Lane and his gang.”
A new list of books for boys in Britain has just been published but the “superciliati are sniffing away disgustedly at extracts from a list of 170 books that 11- to 14-year-old boys might actually enjoy.”