EDUCATING BOYS, LEARNING GENDER Series editors: Debbie Epstein and Máirtín Mac an Ghaill

EDUCATING BOYS, LEARNING GENDER Series editors: Debbie Epstein and Máirtín Mac an Ghaill This timely series provides a well articulated response to the current concerns about boys in schools. Drawing upon a wide range of contemporary theorising, the series authors debate questions of masculinities and highlight the changing nature of gender and sexual interactions in educational institutions. The aim throughout is to offer teachers and other practitioners grounded support and new insights into the changing demands of teaching boys and girls. Current and forthcoming titles: Madeleine Arnot: Boy s Work: Teacher Initiatives on Masculinity and Gender Equality Christine Skelton: Schooling the Boys: Masculinities and Primary Education Martin Mills: Challenging Violence in Schools: An Issue of Masculinities Leonie Rowan et al.: Boys, Literacies and Schooling: The Dangerous Territories of Gender-based Literacy Reform

Schooling the boys Masculinities and primary education Christine Skelton Open University Press Buckingham Philadelphia

Open University Press Celtic Court 22 Ballmoor Buckingham MK18 1XW email: enquiries@openup.co.uk world wide web: www.openup.co.uk and 325 Chestnut Street Philadelphia, PA 19106, USA First Published 2001 Copyright Christine Skelton, 2001 All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher or a licence from the Copyright Licensing Agency Limited. Details of such licences (for reprographic reproduction) may be obtained from the Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd of 90 Tottenham Court Road, London, W1P 0LP. A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library ISBN 0 335 20695 6 (pb) 0 335 20696 4 (hb) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Skelton, Christine. Schooling the boys: masculinities and primary education / Christine Skelton. p. cm. (Educating boys, learning gender) Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN 0-335-20696-4 ISBN 0-335-20695-6 (pbk.) 1. Boys Education (Elementary) Great Britain. 2. Underachievers Great Britain. 3. Sex differences in education Great Britain. I. Title. II. Series. LC1390.S54 2001 372.1821 0941 dc21 00-050199 Typeset by Graphicraft Limited, Hong Kong Printed in Great Britain by Biddles Limited, Guildford and Kings Lynn

Contents Series editors introduction Acknowledgements ix xiii Introduction 1 Part one Context and theoretical perspectives 9 1 A history of boys schooling 11 2 Theorizing masculinities 39 3 Boys and primary schooling: a feminist perspective 61 Part two Inside the primary classroom 77 4 Primary schools and local communities 79 5 Being a (school) boy 96 6 Male teachers and primary schools 116 7 Heterosexuality in the primary classroom 139 8 Conclusion: gender in the primary classroom 164 References 180 Index 199

Series editors introduction Educating boys is currently seen both globally and locally to be in crisis. In fact, there is a long history to the question: what about the boys? However, it was not until the 1990s that the question of boys education became a matter of public and political concern in a large number of countries around the world, most notably the UK, the USA and Australia. There are a number of different approaches to troubling questions about boys in schools to be found in the literature. The questions concern the behaviours and identities of boys in schools, covering areas such as school violence and bullying, homophobia, sexism and racism, through to those about boys perceived underachievement. In Failing Boys? Issues in Gender and Achievement, Epstein and her colleagues (1998) identify three specific discourses that are called upon in popular and political discussions of the schooling of boys: poor boys ; failing schools, failing boys ; and boys will be boys. They suggest that it might be more useful to draw, instead, on feminist and profeminist insights in order to understand what is going on in terms of gender relations between boys and girls and amongst boys. Important questions, they suggest, are: what kind of masculinities are being produced in schools, in what ways, and how do they impact upon the education of boys? In other words, there is an urgent need to place boys educational experiences within the wider gender relations within the institution and beyond. Despite the plethora of rather simplistic and often counter-productive solutions (such as making classrooms more boy-friendly in macho ways) that are coming from governments in different part of the English-speaking world and from some of the more populist writers in the area (e.g. Steve Biddulph), there is a real necessity for a more thoughtful approach to the issues raised by what are quite long-standing problems in the schooling of boys. Approaches for advice to researchers in the field of boys

x Series editors introduction underachievement by policy makers and by teachers and principals responsible for staff development in their schools are an almost daily event, and many have already tried the more simplistic approaches and found them wanting. There is, therefore, an urgent demand for more along the lines suggested here. This is not a series of how to do it handbooks for working with boys. Rather, the series draws upon a wide range of contemporary theorizing that is rethinking gender relations. While, as editors, we would argue strongly that the issues under discussion here require theorizing, it is equally important that books in the area address the real needs of practitioners as they struggle with day-to-day life in schools and other places where professionals meet and must deal with the varied, often troubling, masculinities of boys. Teachers, youth workers and policy makers (not to mention parents of boys and girls!) are challenged by questions of masculinity. While many, perhaps most, boys are not particularly happy inhabiting the space of the boy who is rough, tough and dangerous to know, the bullying of boys who present themselves as more thoughtful and gentle can be problematic in the extreme. We see a need, then, for a series of books located within institutions, such as education, the family and training/workplace and grounded in practitioners everyday experiences. These will HH be explored from new perspectives that encourage a more reflexive approach to teaching and learning with reference to boys and girls. We aim, in this series, to bring together the best work in the area of masculinity and education from a range of countries. There are obvious differences in education systems and forms of available masculinity, even between English-speaking countries, as well as significant commonalties. We can learn from both of these, not in the sense of saying oh, they do that in Australia, so let s do it in the UK (or vice versa), but rather by comparing and contrasting in order to develop deeper understandings both of the masculinities of boys and of the ways adults, especially professionals, can work with boys and girls in order to reduce those ways of doing boy which seem problematic, and to encourage those that are more sustainable (by the boys themselves now and in later life). Thus books in the series address a number of key questions: How can we make sense of the identities and behaviours of those boys who achieve popularity and dominance by behaving in violent ways in school, and who are likely to find themselves in trouble when they are young men out on the streets? How can we address key practitioner concerns about how to teach these boys? What do we need to understand about the experiences of girls as well as boys in order to intervene effectively and in ways which do not put boys down or lead them to reject our approaches to their education? What do we need to understand about gender relations in order to teach both boys and girls more effectively? How can we make sense of masculinities in schools through multidimensional explanations, which take into account the overlapping social

Series editors introduction xi and cultural differences (of, for example, class, ethnicity, dis/ability and sexuality), as well as those of gender? What are the impacts of larger changes to patterns of employment and globalization on the lives of teachers and students in particular schools and locations? The series, as a whole, aims to provide practitioners with new insights into the changing demands of teaching boys and girls in response to these questions. As editors, we have been fortunate to be able to attract authors from a number of different countries to contribute to our series. Much of the work currently being carried out on boys and schooling has taken place in the secondary sector. In this book, Chris Skelton provides an overview and critique of the schooling of boys in the primary sector in England. Traditionally, there has been a tendency to focus on the feminization of primary schooling. In contrast, Chris explores the masculinization of this sector. Writing from a feminist perspective, she critically examines the ways in which school organization and classroom management-control strategies are shaped by dominant notions of masculinities. The text also considers teacher perspectives on contemporary gender and sexual arrangements within primary schooling. Importantly, Chris explores how girls, as well as boys, engage with the educational images of masculinity that are made available to them. From her theoretical investigation emerges an evaluation of past policies and an analysis of implications for future professional practice. Debbie Epstein Máirtín Mac an Ghaill Reference Epstein, D., Elwood, J., Hey, V. and Maw, J. (1998) Schoolboy frictions: feminism and failing boys, in D. Epstein, J. Elwood, V. Hey and J. Maw (eds) Failing Boys? Issues in Gender and Achievement. Buckingham: Open University Press.

Introduction The fact that this book appears in a series focusing on boys and education reflects the growing interest in the area. Many of the writers contributing to this series have been researching and writing about masculinities and schooling for many years before the mid-1990s. I mention this as 1995 appears to mark the time when discussions on boys and education, which had largely been undertaken in academic journals, attracted the attention of the British media and politicians. The manner in which this interest was expressed was in terms of a moral panic as can be seen in such headlines as Where did we go wrong? (Times Educational Supplement (TES) 14 February 1997). Such has been the concern that schools are failing boys that there has been widespread response from the government, local education authorities (LEAs), schools and publishers offering strategies and materials for tackling boys underachievement (Noble and Bradford 2000; Sukhnandan et al. 2000). One interesting quirk in the discussions of boys education (and there are many as this chapter will show) is the apparent concern with boys in secondary schooling. Yet, those aspects of schooling which dominate the discussions, such as boys performance in Key Stage tests, their disinclination towards academic work, negative behaviours in the classroom, and truancy, are as relevant to boys in primary school as they are to boys in secondary school. Lessons could be learned here from the gender equality work of the 1980s when Judith Whyte (1983: 8) pointed out that concentrating initiatives on girls in secondary schooling was misplaced as it is unlikely that crucial differences between the sexes suddenly make their appearance at the age of 13. Their roots are to be uncovered... in the primary years. To say that this book redresses this oversight by focusing on boys in primary schools is accurate but also too generalized. Such a claim masks the complexity of asking questions about what being a boy in school

2 Introduction means. For example, who is asking the question is an important factor; is a female teacher interviewing 6-year-old boys in her class about their attitudes to schoolwork likely to be given the same answers as a male researcher who has a less formal relationship with the boys? (See, for example, Connolly 1998; Swain 2000.) Also, what about primary schools themselves what particular images of masculinity do they convey to pupils and are these images the same across all primary schools? And, what impact have educational policies had, both historically and currently, for the education of boys? This book aims to consider such issues in order to place the recent concerns about boys underachievement in context and to offer relevant, practical solutions for schools to adopt. I should state from the outset that this exploration of boys, masculinity and primary schooling is written by a feminist. I say this because my motivation for looking at boys was prompted by my continuing concern for girls experiences in schooling. Although statistics published by the Department for Education and Employment (DfEE) inform us that girls of all ages are outperforming boys in terms of their academic achievements (and it is largely for this reason that the subject of boys underachievement has received such widespread attention) there is nothing new in this. After all, girls have always outperformed boys in primary schools as became evident in the 11-plus examinations when more girls scored higher marks than boys (Gipps and Murphy 1994; see also Chapter 1). Setting their superior performance in public examinations to one side, were there any other signs that girls, and indeed primary schooling generally, were trouncing boys? When I was visiting schools in the 1990s as a teaching practice supervisor it was still the case that the boys were the ones dominating teachers time through misbehaviour or simply by demanding more attention. They were the ones who pushed girls to the margins of the playground with their football games. So little change there then from primary schooling written about by feminists in the 1970s and 1980s showing how girls tended to be marginalized in the classroom (Clarricoates 1978; Holly 1985). At the same time, watching children on the playground or going about their lessons in the classroom showed that it was not just girls who were being pushed to the sidelines. There were some boys who were never included in the lunchtime football games and would hang around the edges trying to show that they were involved albeit as spectators. Equally, in the classroom, there were some boys whose attitudes and demeanours were such that they did not attract the attention of the teacher and would make no attempt to do so. The question was then who were these boys? Obviously they were not all the same, acting in similar ways and adopting similar behaviours. But how did some boys come to act in particular ways to ensure they did manage to secure disproportionate amounts of the teacher s time and to harass girls, and what part did the school play in this? In order to answer these questions I carried out case studies of two primary

Introduction 3 schools. The information collected in these schools form the second part of the book. The book is divided into two parts. The first part is the textbook element which concentrates on educational policy, literature and theoretical issues relating to boys, masculinity and schooling. This will be of specific interest to those who are themselves writing and researching into boys and schooling as well as to those who have a general interest in understanding the background to the current concern with boys underachievement. Chapter 1 provides a broad sweep of the literature into boys and schooling. It begins with a consideration of the way in which gender has informed educational policy and provision since the introduction of mass state schooling in 1870. It then goes on to trace how the concept of boys has featured in studies of schooling and draws attention to how they have been perceived differently at different historical points. Chapter 2 concentrates on how masculinities have, and are, theorized. Here there will be a comparison of the explanations of masculinity which underpin the literature on boys underachievement to that informing masculinities and schooling (a brief discussion on these is to follow). Chapter 3 sets the scene for the case study chapters by providing a description of the schools and the theoretical position adopted in collecting and analysing the data. I have attempted to avoid alienating readers by not presenting an impenetrable, jargonized and lengthy discussion. At the same time, a clear account of how the research was shaped and undertaken is needed so that readers can see how conclusions were reached. This chapter will also be useful to other females who are carrying out research on or with males. The second part consists of four chapters which focus on different aspects of the case studies. Chapter 4 looks at the impact of the location of a school on the social relations in the school and with the wider community. All schools have been affected by the changes imposed upon them by the radical reforms in educational policy enshrined in the Education Reform Act (ERA) 1988. For some schools there have been additional pressures brought about by shifts in the economy and local labour markets where whole communities have been hit by mass male unemployment. This chapter sets out to show how these changes have had knock-on implications for constructions of masculinity in the local culture, which in turn impact upon the organization and management structures of a school. Chapter 5 explores how boys deal with the differing expectations of what it means to be a boy compared to a school boy. Here lie many of the problems that schools experience in attempting to encourage boys to be more explicitly positive towards, and interested in, education and schooling. While being a boy revolves around identifying themselves as tough, independent, resourceful, competitive, schools expect their pupils to conform to rules and authority to demonstrate the very opposite characteristics in fact.

4 Introduction Chapter 6 looks at a different aspect of masculinity in primary schools that of the male primary teacher. The feminization of teaching (Moir and Moir 1999) is one argument which has been put forward to explain the underachievement of boys and thus one suggested solution is to increase the number of men teachers. Although men teachers might be underrepresented in terms of numbers they are overrepresented in terms of occupying high status positions in primary schools. One of the reasons for this may be because, as men in a predominantly female profession, they seek out ways of demonstrating their masculinity. Conventional ideas of masculinity see men as managers, disciplinarians and authority figures so it is perhaps not surprising to find them occupying headteacher positions and teaching the oldest children in the school. This chapter looks at how the men teachers in one primary school developed a laddish relationship with the boys through humour and a passion for football in order to show they were properly masculine. This had implications for the dominant form of masculinity in the school as well as a knock-on effect for how the girls were managed. Chapter 7 expands upon the issue of how girls interact with men teachers who adopt laddish approaches by looking at heterosexuality in the primary school. A part of acting out laddish behaviours is to have some interaction with the opposite sex whether it be flirting, teasing or harassing. The first section of the chapter considers how the girls in one class dealt with the flirtatious attitudes of their class teacher by reversing the male gaze. It then goes on to look at romance relationships between boys and girls and explores how, with very young boys, their actions often become more exaggerated and could readily be interpreted as sexual harassment. A question which is raised is how and when do young boys start to learn about sexual harassment. The final section briefly takes up the issue of the sexual abuse of children by teachers. The fear of being seen as a paedophile or being accused of abusing a pupil is a major concern of men teachers which is out of all proportion to the number of incidents that actually occur. However, there is a resounding silence on the subject which will do nothing to help counter the anxieties of men at a time when the government is seeking to increase the number of male primary teachers. The concluding chapter will summarize the main findings of the research and provide ways of addressing similar issues in other schools. A note on boys underachievement At the beginning of this Introduction reference was made to the relatively recent high profile given in the British media to boys underachievement although published research on masculinities and schooling had made its appearance several years earlier (Walker 1988; Abraham 1989; Mac an Ghaill 1991). The emergence of research into masculinities and schooling

Introduction 5 stemmed from a growing interest in men s studies and the development of more sophisticated theories of gender which challenged restrictive ideas of the male sex-role (Carrigan et al. 1985). Hence, the use of masculinities to denote multiple ways of being and becoming male. These more sophisticated theories also allowed schools themselves to be investigated as places which produced masculinity (see Chapter 2 for discussion of sex-role theory and recent theorizing of masculinities). The main function of these research studies was to look at how male pupils learned to be boys/young men in school settings. While these studies have proved extremely illuminating about how boys are in school they have rarely offered practical advice to schools and teachers (and I include my own work in this criticism). Even before boys underachievement attracted the attention it has, those involved in research into masculinities and schooling were saying that it is important for programmes to be developed so that work on issues of masculinity should be felt to be going somewhere (Connell 1989: 301; Kenway 1995). Although publications are now beginning to appear which pull together carefully conducted research studies with practical advice to teachers (see Francis 2000) these are recent initiatives. So, while the literature on masculinities and schooling has the hallmark of rigorously conducted research which has provided rich insights into the school lives of boys, it has let down teachers and schools by failing to offer any practical advice for school policies or classroom strategies. In contrast the boys underachievement literature is awash with practical ideas and recommendations for schools (Bradford 1997; Bleach 1998). The reason for this is that the boys underachievement literature emerged in response to a particular problem. The problem was that boys were seen to be underachieving in relation to girls. This failure of boys was located in the environment schools found themselves in following the Education Reform Act 1988. The ERA placed schools into a marketplace where they had to compete against others to ensure their survival. They had to demonstrate to customers (parents) that they could provide a better service than the school next door. In order to facilitate this competition the government devised the idea of league tables for England and Wales where the examination results of all schools were published and ranked. By focusing on examination results schools were quick to realize that there was a gender gap between the achievements of boys and girls (although as will be shown in Chapter 1 this was largely due to a superficial reading of the statistics). Thus, prevailing wisdom says that if schools could improve the results of their male pupils then the overall performance rating of the school would increase thereby enhancing their position in the league tables. So schools were on the lookout for ways of tackling failing boys. The difficulty here was that solutions were suggested which were piecemeal and unsubstantiated. Recommendations were made based on the particular circumstances of one school and which, in themselves, had not

6 Introduction been devised in response to systematic research carried out in that school. The consequences of such arbitrary approaches can be seen in the apparent contradictory solutions suggested. On the one hand we have the suggestion that there should be single-sex subject teaching, as boys will be more prepared to be wrong in the absence of girls (Kingston 1996: 4), and on the other that there should be mixed gender groups [to] encourage boys to develop better language skills from girls (Terry and Terry 1998: 116). A further problem in devising solutions in the absence of systematic research is that they tend to be based on people s personal and professional instincts. These instincts are informed by all manner of factors such as political perspectives, social and cultural understandings and so on. Given that people hold different perspectives and numerous people offered numerous solutions to the issue of failing boys then it is not surprising to discover that the discussions on boys underachievement encompassed several different viewpoints. Debbie Epstein and her colleagues (1998) have identified three different perspectives within the discussions on boys underachievement, all of which have different implications for how it is addressed and what it means for girls. What they refer to as the Poor Boys discourse has also been labelled as the Lads Movement (Kenway 1995). Here boys are seen as victims, specifically of single (fatherless) families, female dominated primary schooling, and feminism which has enabled girls successes. Thus, one strategy which has been recommended is the recruitment of more men into teaching, particularly primary teaching, to provide boys with male role models. A second perspective is that of Failing Schools, Failing Boys where any school deemed to be failing in that it does not produce pupils with high levels of literacy and numeracy and above average passes in public examinations is seen as failing the boys (and presumably girls) who attend them. Unlike the Poor Boys perspective, it is rare for proponents of the Failing Schools discourse to make overt and direct attacks on feminism. Finally, there is Boys Will Be Boys, which conceives of boys in conventional, stereotypical ways and attributes these traditional characteristics to natural differences as a result of biology and psychology. This discourse has much in common with that of Poor Boys in that boys are seen to have been made victims because of feminist women s successes at promoting the female over men and maleness, thus challenging traditional ways of being a man. Epstein et al. (1998) have pointed to the contradictory nature of the boys will be boys debate saying that: What is particularly interesting... is the way it manages, at one and the same time, to posit an unchanging and unchangeable boyness, which involves aggression, fighting and delayed... maturity and yet situates poor achievement at school as extrinsic to boys themselves. (Epstein et al. 1998: 9)

Introduction 7 These different understandings of boys and the causes of boys underachievement are taken up and discussed further in Chapter 2, particularly in relation to the kinds of programmes developed for use in schools. Here attention has been drawn to a distinction returned to at several points in this book between the literature on boys underachievement which offers a plethora of catch-all solutions to teachers but is not based on systematic rigorous research, and that of masculinities and schooling, which until recently provided rich insights but no practical advice. The next chapter will set out the background to the recent concerns about boys and schooling by looking at the impact of educational policy, practice and provision in gendering education.