Boys Don't Try? Rethinking Masculinity in Schools

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In instances where behaviour needs to be addressed in the here and now of the lesson, avoid using names: I’m just going to wait while those at the back stop talking. There is something for everyone here, whether you read this as a classroom teacher, determined to do better for all the students in every class, or as a headteacher more worried about whole-school strategy, vision and ethos. We are seeing a shift upwards for boys, the Deis initiative has improved resources into schools, the number of early school-leavers is dropping and the value of education is rising. As I mentioned in a previous blog post, I decided to try out Gretchen Rubin’s strategy of pairing in an attempt to develop the habit of going for a walk every day.

Most of the chapters are a comment on the societal situations boys are growing up in with actions that teachers and school leaders can take to work to change that. We’ve all attended alecture or watched aTV show (perhaps against our will) about asubject we thought we weren’t interested in, only to find ourselves fascinated; and it’s easy to get bored even when you usually like the topic… The content of aproblem… may be sufficient to prompt your interest, but it won’t maintain it. Be clear on exactly what you want everybody to produce and praise boys discreetly when they meet your demands. As aresult of this attainment gap, schools up and down the country have invested time and money in training aimed at raising boys’ attainment. One such idea was competition – in an English class he would gather the boys in teams, each team would create a piece of writing and then “knock out” others in a World Cup of writing.In fact, even in the working-class boys group, there has been a narrowing of the gap – for example, in relation to early school-leaving.

Yet this is true only when they win, Roberts goes on to suggest, reflecting that this task perhaps even damaged the self esteem of those knocked out in the first round. If teachers really want to improve outcomes for boys, then they need to build positive relationships with them.The focus was on supporting their children through online learning but we hope to continue with other events as time goes on. Matt Pinkett is a head of English in Surrey, and Mark Roberts is assistant principal at a mixed 11-18 comprehensive school. What teachers have to get past, he says, is the belief that if a boy doesn’t comply, doesn’t hand in homework or is misbehaving, that it’s because he’s male.

Written in 2019, the polemic of the book is of interest in the context of the culture wars in North Atlantic cultures following the financial crash of 2007/8. Tackle social class: The poorest outcomes are for working class boys, so gender and social equity must be seen as interrelated. I also need to read up on Mary Myatt’s work highlighting changing the language from “ability” to “attainment”. 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. So we need to challenge that in school, and we need to think about issues around sexist male behaviour and violence in the texts they’re reading.Photograph: Jill Mead/The Guardian Matt Pinkett of Kings college, Guildford, says male pupils are damaged by sexist assumptions. Sometimes, this might mean ‘spoon-feeding’ an answer to a boy in a 1:1 chat and then asking him to tell the class the answer in a whole class discussion later on so he can experience the pleasure of ‘being right. For more on this, see NACE Trustee Liz Allen CBE’s review of Reassessing ‘Ability’ Grouping: Improving Practice for Equity and Attainment. So, for example, you’ve got a boy you think doesn’t like reading, so you decide to pander to his love of football and give him a book about that to read.

This is a pretty a-historical account, and there is much written elsewhere on the issue of boys in education, from at least Socrates on!Also, not all boys like the same thing and assuming that they do reinforces stereotypes and narrows definitions of what it means to be aboy.