The gender issue is relevant to classroom learning in more ways than one. Increasingly in the United States, young boys are saying that school is stupid and they do not like to read. This phenomenon cuts across all demographic groups: it affects affluent white boys in the suburbs no less than it affects black boys in low-income neighborhoods. In this article, the author, who is both a physician and a psychologist, discusses five distinct and independent factors which are driving boys away from books over the past 30 years--factors which affect boys and not girls. These are: (1) changes in education over the past three decades; (2) video games; (3) medications for ADHD; (4) endocrine disruptors; and (5) devaluation of masculinity. The author focuses on the first of the five factors and offers a more practical alternative that librarians and other educators can put into place right now.