Boys Don't Try? Rethinking Masculinity in Schools

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Self-deprecating humour works well. In fact, humour generally has been found to have a positive effect on retention and recall. Whilst listening to Hadley Stewart’s contribution, I was surprised to learn how recently Section 28 (a law which effectively prevented teachers talking about homosexuality, even in cases of bullying) was still a feature in schools (2000 in Scotland, 2003 in the rest of the UK).

Chapters on violence, sexism in schools, peer pressure and relationships offer evidence-based and practical information for schools wishing to lift the schooling outcomes and behaviours of boys. The topics are grounded in real-life scenarios, which also help to give the views credibility and a sense of familiarity for teachers. So is there really a crisis? Or some kind of moral panic? Why are boys falling behind? And what can we do to help them achieve more? Crisis In the UK, as in other western countries, this problem is stark and has dire consequences. Boys are more likely to be expelled from school, less likely to go to university and not as likely as girls to find employment between the ages of 22 and 29. Most disturbingly, men are also three times more likely than women to commit suicide and comprise 96 per cent of the UK prison population. This book is easy to read, but hard to listen to. I’m reassured by the solutions, but frustrated by all the mistakes we’ve been making for so long.Hi Hannah, thanks for your comment and for sharing the video. I think Laurie A. Couture’s new book sounds really interesting. This year – again – girls outperformed boys in the Leaving and Junior Cert. They sat more higher level papers and got more H1 grades overall. Academic studies show boys are underachieving, in all stages of education, from preschool – where boys lag behind in language and communication - up to college. 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.

In Boys Don’t Try? Matt Pinkett and Mark Roberts directly link boys’ relative educational underachievement to mistaken attempts to aspire to an “outdated, but nonetheless widespread idea” about what it means to be a “real man” and “a brand of masculinity that leaves many boys floundering” - and make no mistake, it is a brand, sold hard yet often unthinkingly, with very real casualties. The message is clear: we have a lot of work to do.As Roberts and Pinkett make clear throughout Boys Don’t Try, high expectations are far more useful to build student self-esteem. Similar classes I’ve taught more recently have completed the same tasks as top sets, with often just as good results. Again supporting Roberts’ assertion that setting is rarely just about ability. Pinkett’s Damascene moment came a few years into his teaching career while discussing a poem with a female colleague. She said the way he interpreted it was down to the fact that, as a man, he thought about sex the whole time. “It was acceptable sexism, because it was directed at a man not a woman,” says Pinkett. “And it made me realise that, though girls and women undoubtedly come off worse as a result of sexist assumptions, boys and men are damaged by them, too.” Chapter 4: Mental Health– Another thought-provoking listen with chilling statistics. Pleased to know that a number of the recommended strategies are already in place in my setting. Appreciated the mention of teacher modelling openly talking about their emotions and shoulder-shoulder talks, which made me think of a Pivotal podcast that I listened to in my first year of teaching and has stayed with me since.. Never try to ‘out-man’ the boys. Using your increased physical size or shouting to beat down bad behaviour is never going to work. Instead, when reprimanding a boy, avoid invading their personal space and remain calm and polite as you demand their compliance.

Often boys will opt out of doing work because in the status-driven world of toxic masculinity it’s easier to not try and fail, than it is to try and risk failure. 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. 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. To the fragile, male, adolescent, mindset, trying hard and still failing is the worst of both worlds. Research suggests boys are more likely than girls to self-sabotage their academic outcomes in an effort to protect their sense of self-esteem.” 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.

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. Boys Don’t Try is also devoted to improving boys’ social and emotional wellbeing, arguing that much low achievement in boys is rooted in social and cultural contexts. A “good student” is seen as a compliant one, with boys more frequently sanctioned and girls spending more time on homework. Teachers’ high expectations of themselves and their students, in subject knowledge and behaviour for learning, trump gender considerations (such as single-sex classes, or male students being taught by male teachers) every time.