Boys Don't Try? Rethinking Masculinity in Schools

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Author Mark Roberts was one such teacher, but, as he explains through anecdote and research findings, a raft of unintended consequences stem from creating a hyper competitive environment for boys and endeavouring to make all learning “relevant” to their lives.

Some boys, believing that they’ll never get recognition for any academic output, will try to seek attention by playing up in class. As such, Iwas interested to read Boys Don’t Try: Rethinking Masculinity in Schools by Matt Pinkett and Mark Roberts which examines key research in this area and encourages teachers to reflect on how they define masculinity. Each chapter has athree-part structure: stories, key research and practical solutions. Chapter One focuses on some of the most prevalent myths about teaching boys and their engagement with learning and how these myths can actually be damaging to boys education. The situation is worsened by what the authors call the “engagement myth” that boys like competition, leading teachers to make activities competitive so male students are more motivated to learn. We must challenge assumptions, motivations and values… We need a critical dialogue, which can only occur in education spaces based upon universal values or preconditions of hope, modesty, respect, courage and love.”Despite the continued debunking of the learning styles theory, the notion that boys benefit from kinaesthetic activities persists. Willingham ( 2009) states: Boys (and girls) have more respect for teachers who know their stuff. Being an expert in your subject (or subjects) is a must. Our book, Boys Don’t Try? Rethinking Masculinity in Schools was born out of a response to the snake-oil solutions to raising male achievement that proliferate much of the discourse around boys and their relative academic underachievement in comparison to girls. In the book, he and Roberts push the idea of “tender masculinity”, which they counter not with “toxic masculinity”, a term they find unhelpful, but with “non-tender masculinity”, since that implies the absence of something better, rather than the presence of something poisonous. Here Roberts explores anumber of reasons why this is problematic. One reason is that boys get bored of things that interest them eventually. Willingham ( 2009) in Why Don’t Students Like School? states:

The two schools-based authors write chapters in turn. In chapter one, Mark Roberts tells of his early success as a teacher with a reputation for teaching boys well and describes his popular classroom strategies. I was teaching poetry to a low set year 9 class, many of whom had previously expressed very negative ideas about the police, often in reference to their own dealings with them at the weekend. As a department we had already selected a collection of ‘disturbed voices’ poetry, perhaps in an unconscious attempt to engage some key boys in the year. In this lesson, I decided to get students to respond to Armitage’s ‘Hitcher’ in the form of a police interview. I asked their opinions and they helped me rephrase the writing frame to make it ‘more realistic’. As I had hoped, the boys showed interest and produced more writing than they often did. Yet, clearly I was guilty of the becoming a ‘cultural accomplice’, merely reinforcing the idea that they, as disadvantaged boys, were natural ‘troublemakers’, certainly not analytical thinkers or, god-forbid, the kind of students who might actually like poetry. The inspector, incidentally, told me that the task was excellently engaging, but clearly judged the students for their in depth knowledge of police procedures. Be clear on exactly what you want everybody to produce and praise boys discreetly when they meet your demands. Research by Reid et al found that Key Stage 2 pupils viewed being shouted at as ineffective and damaging to long-term relationships between teachers and pupils. Chapter 8: Violence– Some really thought-provoking questions asked as part of a suggested approach for dealing with violence in schools: Explanation – Reflection – Expression (E-R-E). This could be particularly helpful re playground incidents. I also appreciated the highlighted need for conversation and support for those who walk away from a confrontation as I hadn’t considered the impacts of this before.

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As an English teacher and a feminist, I like to think that I’m quite attuned to the ways in which language reveals certain social assumptions. I’ve spent hours patiently discussing the problems with language like “That’s so gay” and questioning the nature of ‘banter’ with frustrated students who didn’t see the problem. Yet, just in this blog, I’ve used phrases like “challenging boys” and described a low set without mentioning the gender divide, assuming the unequal gender divide of bottom sets to be implicit. As a new HOD, I have tried to ensure that we teach some non-stereotypical texts, but unlike Pinkett, I don’t currently make an effort to use homonormative pronouns in the classroom. I can imagine the way that my classes might respond to his example “Why might a man write his boyfriend a sonnet?” and have been somewhat unwilling to disrupt learning in this way. Although I regularly have the kind of “Why do we assume his love is a woman?” conversations about literature, I definitely haven’t yet normalised the ‘no song and dance’ approach that Pinkett advocates. Secondly, Roberts invokes Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of cultural capital to argue that teaching boys content they find relevant does them a disservice by not giving them access to “certain knowledge, behaviours, and skills” that are “highly valued in society”. Teaching only highly relevant content also reinforces low expectations of what boys can and need to learn. This book opens with stark facts about the gender gap – not only in school, but in society: 96 per cent of our prison population is male. If we can encourage boys to really value formal education, help them see it for themselves, it goes a long way to helping them to meaningfully engage and embrace it.”