The very worst thing about having sons has got to be the somewhat strident, always unsolicited advice that I receive on bringing up boys. All the conversations inevitably revolve around respect and sensitivity, the subtext being that boys are programmed to grow up into violent brutes, an inevitability that can only be averted by the intervention of everyone who has some free advice to dispense. There is a perennial stream of forwards and open letters to ‘mothers with sons’ which turns into an avalanche sometime around the Women’s Day. This year, on schedule, I was forwarded a particularly irksome...

The very worst thing about having sons has got to be the somewhat strident, always unsolicited advice that I receive on bringing up boys. All the conversations inevitably revolve around respect and sensitivity, the subtext being that boys are programmed to grow up into violent brutes, an inevitability that can only be averted by the intervention of everyone who has some free advice to dispense. There is a perennial stream of forwards and open letters to ‘mothers with sons’ which turns into an avalanche sometime around the Women’s Day. This year, on schedule, I was forwarded a particularly irksome...

Thus far, 7 blog posts on reading. After each post, I think to myself – there, that’s done with.  Apparently not! So how many surveys and legislations and propaganda pieces does it take to get this simple point across? Obviously a lot more than I have managed to squeeze into 7 blog posts. Well then, here goes… Yet another study books – this is how they work. A survey of 4th Graders, undertaken by the University of Maryland, revealed that engaged readers from economically disadvantaged homes routinely outperformed less engaged readers from richer families. “Based on a massive sample, this...